San Diego Spotlight : Symphony, Talmi Hoping to Top Charts With Gliere

Today and Sunday, San Diego Symphony music director Yoav Talmi realizes his long-held dream to make a recording with the local orchestra. In 10 hours of recording spread over three sessions at Copley Symphony Hall, Talmi and the orchestra will put Reinhold Gliere’s Third Symphony (“Ilya Murometz”) on a compact disc for Telarc Records.

In preparation for the recording sessions, the symphony played the Gliere on two subscription concerts earlier this week.

The selection of this obscure opus by the little-known 20th-Century Russian composer was dictated by Telarc, the same company that brought out the orchestra’s two pops recordings under Lalo Schifrin. Although Talmi was eager to record something monumental and well-known, such as the Mahler Second Symphony he conducted earlier this season, Telarc dictated Gliere’s Romantic orchestral work because that work was not readily available on compact disc.

Dan Erwine of KPBS-FM, curator of the station’s vast (but now dormant since the station dropped its classical music format) record collection, explained that only three recordings of the Gliere Third Symphony have been made outside the Soviet Union since the 1950s, including a complete version (93 minutes) with the London Royal Philharmonic under Harold Farberman.

“It was made on the British Unicorn label in 1978 as a two-record LP and transferred to compact disc in 1988,” Erwine said. “It is still available as an import through Harmonia Mundi of Los Angeles. Eugene Ormandy’s LP recording with the Philadelphia Orchestra made in the 1970s used a slightly edited version that played for 70 minutes on a single disc. This version is similar to what the San Diego Symphony will use.”

The Gliere Third Symphony, the composer’s best-known work outside the Soviet Union, is a four-movement programmatic symphony based on a Russian folk legend. The personage of Ilya Murometz has been described as a medieval, Slavic Paul Bunyan, part larger-than-life hero and part saint.

Talmi’s drive to record is based on his success in the 1980s as music director of the Israeli Chamber Orchestra. He built that orchestra’s reputation with a combination of successful European and American tours and highly-praised recordings. The high cost of taking a symphony orchestra on tour has ruled out that possibility in San Diego, so at this stage Talmi must rely on recordings to promulgate the symphony’s good work.

Talmi’s next recording with the symphony, also for Telarc and scheduled for January, will be a disc of Brahms transcriptions for orchestra. It will include Talmi’s own transcription of the Brahms Sextet, Op. 18. Talmi is not ready to negotiate the repertory for the two recordings to be made the following season, however. He hopes that the quality of his Gliere Third Symphony recording, as well as favorable reviews, will give him some leverage to get the music he wants.

“I would love to do Bruckner,” Talmi said in a recent interview. His 1986 recording of the Bruckner Ninth Symphony with the Oslo Philharmonic won the coveted French “Grand Prix du Disque.”

“There is a big market for Bruckner in Europe, but I realize there is not as large a following for Bruckner in America,” he added.

Time and the record critics will tell. A logical route to spur future sales of San Diego Symphony recordings would involve using the name recognition of Robert Shaw, the symphony’s principal guest conductor. When Shaw was in town in April, he indicated he would be willing to conduct the San Diego Symphony on a future recording to boost the orchestra’s sales appeal. He said he had not yet been approached to do so, but has given some thought to the possibility. The emeritus conductor of the Atlanta Symphony has a number of Grammy Award-winning recordings to his credit.

Shaw suggested that Beethoven’s “Missa Solemnis” would be a likely candidate for such a recording.

“If I were to do a choral recording here, I would want more (rehearsal) time to work with the local choruses,” Shaw said. “If we did the ‘Missa Solemnis,’ I would combine the San Diego Master Chorale and the La Jolla Civic University Chorus. That would make a strong choral sound.”

Hearts and flowers. St. Paul’s Episcopal cathedral will host a benefit for the Episcopal Community Services of San Diego with a music and floral festival next weekend (May 31-June 2). A performance of Gounod’s “Mass to St. Cecilia” performed by the La Jolla Civic University Chorus will inaugurate the festival at 8 p.m. Friday in the cathedral sanctuary.

The cathedral, filled with floral displays made for the festival, will be open to the public next Saturday from noon to 6 p.m. The San Luis Rey Chorale will perform at 8 p.m. that evening, and various musical events will punctuate the Sunday festivities. More information is available through the cathedral office, 298-7261.