A Chance for San Diegans to Get a Handel on Kiesler

When you are the music director of an orchestra in a remote location such as Springfield, Ill., you have to try harder. And Kenneth Kiesler, the energetic 37-year-old conductor who has led the Springfield Symphony for the last decade, has demonstrated an uncanny knack for calling attention to his remote musical organization.

Local audiences will have an opportunity to judge Kiesler’s podium proficiency when he conducts the San Diego Symphony and Master Chorale in Handel’s “Messiah” at Copley Symphony Hall on Dec. 13 and 16.

In 1985, Kiesler carved a chamber orchestra out of his Springfield Symphony, dubbed it the Illinois Chamber Orchestra, and quickly started touring with this 30-piece ensemble. Aided by funding from the Illinois Legislature--Springfield is the state capital--the chamber orchestra made its New York debut in Lincoln Center’s Alice Tully Hall in 1987.

The Tully Hall appearance did not exactly set the town on its ear, which is not surprising, since Manhattan’s concert halls are inundated by visiting orchestras from cities with higher musical profiles than Springfield, Ill’s. So, when Kiesler and company returned to the Big Apple earlier this year to play Carnegie Hall, Kiesler was determined to snare the attention of jaded New Yorkers. He commissioned well-known American composer Gunther Schuller to write a concerto for two pianos, three hands, using the keyboard talents of Lorin Hollander and Leon Fleisher. (Fleisher lost the use of his right hand about 25 years ago through overexertion.) The ploy--some might have called it a gimmick--worked both in drawing a sizable audience and garnering critical attention.

“The New York Times raved about the Schuller concerto,” said Kiesler from his Illinois home. “It made a strong impression. People may have expected some sort of circus, but it wasn’t. The use of three hands expanded the capabilities of one piano into a larger sound. Schuller tied the harp part into the solo writing, so the harp contributed the notes a fourth hand might have added, but with a different sonority.”

Not only did James Oestreich of the New York Times give the Schuller concerto a favorable evaluation in his review, but the paper ran an extensive feature about the composition and its genesis the Sunday before the Illinois Chamber Orchestra came to town.

Kiesler is equally pleased that the odd concerto has had a life beyond the premiere performances given by his orchestra.

“Fleisher continues to perform the concerto, and he recently played it while touring Japan,” Kiesler noted, adding that Hollander has also performed Schuller’s work with Gary Graffman, another concert pianist with only one good hand.

On the more mundane topic of performing Handel’s “Messiah,” Kiesler bemoaned the oratorio’s overexposure.

“It’s an extraordinary piece of music that he wrote in three weeks. You can sense the white heat of creation going on when you perform it, but it’s a shame that it’s thought of as an easy piece that can be slapped together.”

Kiesler likes to keep up with musicological research and adapt his approach to the results of scholarship.

“Recently discovered evidence substantiates that (French) horns doubled the trumpet parts in certain choruses, giving an orchestral sonority more like (Handel’s) ‘Water Music’. In another chorus, I position the trumpets off stage--I’ll probably put them in the balcony--since the original trumpet parts contain the indication ‘ lontano ,’ which means from afar.”

Because he owns a copy of the first published orchestral score of “Messiah,” the 1767 London edition, Kiesler always consults it for fresh insight when he prepares to conduct a “Messiah.”

“I connect to the piece dramatically, more like opera than oratorio. My approach is to concentrate on its dramatic intent and the declamatory nature of words rather than customary 19th-Century sense of flowing melodic line.”

Contrabass center stage. Bertram Turetzky, a performer who has done more to promote the contrabass than Anne Sophie Mutter has accomplished in winning converts to violin music, will premiere two works for his chosen instrument Dec. 14 at La Jolla’s Sherwood Auditorium.

The International Orchestra, under the baton of guest conductor and fellow UC San Diego faculty member Thomas Nee, will perform Turetzky’s “Ives” for solo flute, contrabass, two speakers and string orchestra. The musical collage is based on themes by American composer Charles Ives and the writings of poet John Greenleaf Whittier.

Turetzky will also solo in the “Jangwa” Concerto by contemporary Polish composer Boguslaw Schaeffer. In addition to these new works, the orchestra will offer Mozart’s Symphony No. 36 (“Linz”) and Schubert’s Fifth Symphony.

Remembering Copland. San Diego Symphony guest conductor Murry Sidlin has added Aaron Copland’s “Variations on a Shaker Melody” from the ballet “Appalachian Spring” to his Classical Hits concert tonight at Copley Symphony Hall.

This Copland tribute, like music director Yoav Talmi’s addition of Copland’s “Quiet City” to Thursday and Friday night’s subscription concerts, was prompted by the composer’s death at age 90 last Sunday. Both Talmi and Sidlin had worked with the composer earlier in their careers. The last time Copland saw a performance of his sole opera, “The Tender Land,” it was in a transcription of the work done by Sidlin.