Hans Graf: Modest About Mozart : Classical music: Conductor Graf downplays his Mozarteum Orchestra’s respected approach to its namesake’s music. The orchestra will present two programs in Costa Mesa.

Conductor Hans Graf and the Mozarteum Orchestra of Salzburg may have every right to claim to know the definitive approach to the music of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.

Established in Salzburg, Mozart’s birthplace, in 1841, the orchestra has been associated with the city’s conservatory since 1880 and serves as the principal resident orchestra at the summer Salzburg Festivals.

But Graf, who will conduct two programs locally in the coming weeks, won’t take such an extreme position.

“I think each generation has to find out (how to play Mozart) for itself,” Graf said in a phone interview from Kansas City, Mo., where the orchestra had stopped on a 14-city tour that includes concerts on Monday and March 4 at the Orange County Performing Arts Center in Costa Mesa. The programs are being sponsored by the Orange County Philharmonic Society.

“Surely we have a tradition in our orchestra,” Graf said. “But it doesn’t save us from (searching) to find our own way.”

Graf won’t even take sides with how large an orchestra ought to be.

“What was the size of the original hall for Mozart, anyway?” he asked. “My orchestra plays (Mozart) with no more than 10 first violins. On tour, we usually have 10. But halls (here) are usually big, so I don’t blame an orchestra that plays in a hall with 2,500 seats with a bit thicker orchestra.

“Our hall (in Salzburg) usually seats 900 or 1,000. That’s very practical to play with 10 first violins--even with eight, even with six. Smaller than that, it gets to be a chamber orchestra. Our orchestra is 90, but for Mozart we never have more than 40 or 45 players.”

Graf can’t even be pinned down about issues of correct performance practice.

“I’m reluctant to speak about the core performance style,” he said. “It’s so personal, even if there are new teachings and new trends. But I don’t believe using period instruments helps you so much to find the correct style. It’s always been the case that it’s how you play on whatever instrument. Period instruments give a flavor which can be very beautiful, but that has to be done by a group which only does that.

“But I believe a normal symphony orchestra, with a good approach, can do a very good and satisfying performance on our pitch nowadays.”

Like Mozart, Graf is an Austrian. He was born in Linz in 1949. After studies at the Music Academy of Graz and classes in Siena and Bologna, among other places, he won the Karl Bohm Conducting Competition in 1979 and subsequently took over Bohm’s production of Mozart’s “Die Entfuhrung aus dem Serail” for the Munich National Opera. He became music director of the Mozarteum Orchestra in 1984 but maintains his interest in conducting opera.

Graf said that criticizing stage directors, who often create controversial approaches to the classics, is a “no-no among the conductors.”

“Stage directors get too much attention,” he said. “No, that’s wrong. They are forced too much to be original, as if no one has ever seen or thought about the piece before. Sometimes they are driven too far by this need.”

Graf is not entirely pleased with all the attention Mozart is getting during this year’s bicentennial anniversary of his death.

“The commercial interest is huge,” he said, “but I hope that real musical love for Mozart will last, will continue next year even more than this year.

“Mozart is very abused. They play too much Mozart--not in concerts, but everywhere else, even on the airplanes. It’s become like wallpaper, like camp. I would like people to listen with more attention and more often to one piece just to get more insight into the music so that the music does not go by like the air.

“I just hope that the Mozart anniversary doesn’t do injustice to him in the sense of being overplayed. But I think he is one of the very, very few composers who can stand that, who can survive.”

Hans Graf will lead the Mozarteum Orchestra of Salzburg in two different programs at the Orange County Performing Arts Center in Costa Mesa. On Monday at 8 p.m., the all-Mozart program will include Symphonies No. 34 and 41 (“Jupiter”) and Violin Concerto No. 5, with soloist Ernst Kovacic. On March 4 at 8 p.m., the program will include Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 20 and Symphony No. 40 and Gerhard Wimberger’s “Reflections on Mozart Themes.” Soloist in the piano concerto will be Steven Lubin. Both concerts are being sponsored by the Orange County Philharmonic Society. Tickets for each concert: $12 - $31. Information: (714) 646-6277.