CLASSICAL MUSIC : Talmi Returns to Conduct Powerful Bruckner Piece

San Diego Symphony music director Yoav Talmi returns to the podium Friday night to lead the orchestra in Anton Bruckner’s mighty Seventh Symphony. This will launch the Israeli maestro’s traversal of all nine Bruckner symphonies, one of the three cycles he has planned to unify his programming over the upcoming seasons.

He is already two symphonies into his cycle of the complete Mahler symphonies, and last month he inaugurated an open-ended cycle of Requiems by various composers with the Faure Requiem.

Talmi has cannily paired the hour-long Bruckner with the always-popular Mendelssohn Violin Concerto, with soloist Ida Levin. Bruckner has not been a staple with the local symphony, although a performance last season of his Fourth Symphony (the “Romantic”) under German guest conductor Christoph Perick was both well-performed and well-received by the audience.

“My choice of music takes into account not only my wishes,” Talmi explained, “but also the expectations of the people we have here. I cannot launch a Bruckner series as if I’m in Chicago and New York, where they have a tradition of performing this music.”

To get local audiences accustomed to the Austrian composer’s hyper-Romantic idiom, Talmi has promised just one jolt of Bruckner per season. In the 1991-92 season, he will conduct the Bruckner Ninth Symphony, which won him the coveted Grand Prix du Disque when he recorded it with the Oslo Philharmonic.

Talmi will discuss his programming preferences and the orchestra’s current season at 8 a.m. Tuesday on classical music station KFSD-FM. He will co-host the hour with station program director and genial morning host Kingsley McLaren.

Fan of Mozart. San Diego’s Mainly Mozart Festival bursts on the local music scene at the beginning of each June with a flurry of concerts and then disappears for another year. To raise the festival’s profile during the rest of the season, a pair of recitals will be presented at the Kingston Hotel, the festival’s primary sponsor.

Cellist Felix Fan, the 15-year-old La Jolla prodigy will perform Sunday, Dec. 2, at 6:30 p.m. accompanied by pianist Karen Follingstad. Earlier this year, Fan won first prize in the American string Teachers Assn. solo competition in College Park, Md. He studies under Eleonore Schoenfeld of the USC music faculty and is a sophomore at La Jolla High School. Fan’s program will include Beethoven’s “Magic Flute” Variations and works by Schumann and Bartok. Cynthia Phelps, principal violist with the Minnesota Orchestra and regular soloist with the Mainly Mozart Festival, will give a recital Feb. 24.

Mainly Mozart music director David Atherton will attend Fan’s performance and the dinner afterward in the hotel restaurant. Atherton had not been scheduled to return to San Diego until late next month, but minor back surgery caused him to cancel his December London conducting engagements and return to San Diego, where he maintains a home, for recuperation.

Singers’ circuit. Swedish baritone Hakan Hagegard, who will appear in San Diego Opera’s season-opening production of Mozart’s “Cosi fan Tutte” in January, was well-received last month as the count in San Francisco Opera’s new production of Richard Strauss’s “Capriccio.” Earlier this month, tenor John Duykers stirred audiences of the Lyric Opera of Chicago’s “The Voyage of Edgar Allan Poe” by American composer Dominick Argento. Duykers will make his San Diego Opera debut in April as Enoch Pratt in Carlisle Floyd’s “The Passion of Jonathan Wade.”

Stephen West, another singer familiar to San Diego Opera patrons (he sang the wily Rangoni in last season’s “Boris Godunov”), sang another key role in the surreal Argento work. (The set for “Poe,” by the way, was constructed locally in the San Diego Opera scenic shop.)

Local soprano Virginia Sublett is singing the role of Nightengale and Fire in the current New York City Opera production of Ravel’s “L’Enfant et les Sortileges.”

Conductors: Karen Keltner, San Diego Opera associate conductor, spent last week at Florida’s Orlando Opera, where she conducted three performances of Offenbach’s “The Tales of Hoffmann.”

The San Diego Symphony has confirmed that Michael Palmer, music director of the New Haven Symphony, will fill in for the ailing Robert Shaw in January’s performances of the Mozart Mass in C Minor, K. 417.

Unusual this week. The 500-voice UC San Diego Gospel Choir will perform under the direction of Ken Anderson at 8 p.m. Tuesday in Mandeville Auditorium. . . .

In its television debut, the San Diego Early Music Ensemble will present “Songs of Courts and Cathedrals” on KPBS (Channel 15) Wednesday at 10:30 p.m. The ensemble sings Renaissance vocal music in a variety of local settings, from the Renaissance Room of the San Diego Museum of Art to the courtyard of the Mission San Diego de Alcala. . . .

At the Poway Center for the Performing Arts, Mozart’s rarely heard one-act comedy with music “The Impressario” will be given in concert form by the International Orchestra under guest director Karen Keltner. The sole performance will be a 8 p.m. Friday. San Diego Opera general director Ian Campbell will narrate, assisted by singers Virginia Sublett, Kerry O’Brien and William Eichorn.