MUSIC : A Noteworthy First for Soloist

Tchaikovsky’s Piano Concerto No. 1 is such a staple on concert programs that it seems unbelievable that any major artist hasn’t tackled it yet. But Dickran Atamian will be attacking the Tchaikovsky warhorse for the first time when he appears as soloist on the last Pacific Symphony concert of the summer season at Irvine Meadows Amphitheatre on Saturday.

How come?

“I’ve never been asked for it, oddly enough,” Atamian, 35, said by phone from Ann Arbor, Mich., where he is an artist in residence at the University of Michigan. “If one were to traverse my career, with ‘The Rite of Spring’ and lots of Brahms, Prokofiev and Liszt . . . you’d see I play mostly the big works. This certainly should be there.”

“The Rite of Spring”?

Yep. Atamian made quite a splash when he played the world premiere of Sam Raphling’s piano transcription of Stravinsky’s epic-making ballet score at his Carnegie Hall debut in 1979. That was after he won the prestigious Naumberg Competition when he was 19, and it looked as if his career were going to take off.

RCA Victor released his “Rite” performance, Atamian toured the Soviet Union with it and PBS even broadcast him playing the Stravinsky opus.

But subsequent works recorded during his five-year contract with RCA, including Mussorgsky’s “Pictures at an Exhibition,” were never released.

“They were only interested in getting Stravinsky in their audio catalogue,” Atamian said. “It was something rare, something different. They weren’t interested, to be honest, in promoting Atamian as much as (promoting) Atamian’s version of the ‘Rite of Spring.’ ”

Big concert dates also started to dry up, and he began to appear with second-tier orchestras. But in 1988, he began to make a comeback, and appeared with the New York Philharmonic, the San Francisco Symphony and other major orchestras.

Still, he admits that “now my career has got to take another turn. To be honest, I need a big push for it to go anywhere. I’ve never played over 20 to 25 dates (a year). That’s been (my) whole career, and a lot of times not even that many.”

Atamian was born in Chicago and grew up in Phoenix. He started playing the piano at 9, made his debut with the Phoenix Symphony when he was 12, and at 15 caught the ear of Van Cliburn.

Cliburn recommended further study with the famed pedagogue John Perry, and Atamian worked with Perry at the University of Texas, Austin, and later with him at Oberlin College, Conservatory of Music. Then came the Naumberg and subsequently a Rockefeller Grant to study with the late Jorge Bolet.

“I learned the ‘Rite of Spring’ with him,” Atamian said. “He was the king of transcriptions, just an incredible artist.”

Atamian regards the Tchaikovsky Concerto as an “awkward and passionate-driving work.”

“He did not write it pianistically,” he said. “It’s very odd. Look at the Rachmaninoff concertos and they’re beautifully written. Tchaikovsky is totally off the wall.

“In the Rachmaninoff concertos, the notes lie under the hand. Tchaikovsky really stretches the limits of the hand--not just in the octaves and things. Everyone can reach an octave. He writes so many unusual arpeggios. . . . He uses what you’d think are the wrong inversions, and he starts them at an unstandard place. They’re difficult to play with any volume.”

Atamian said he will be concentrating on “a lot of the inner workings of the piece, rather than on the obvious things.”

“My interpretation is somewhat different in that I bring out certain things usually I’ve not heard when I’ve heard the piece,” he said. “It’s nothing profound, just certain passage work sounds different.

“I think of it as being supportive of the orchestra and needs to be heard. They have the melody. Why not support it with harmonic arpeggiations?”

The pianist also accepts the inevitable coloring that amplification will throw over his interpretation at the outdoor facility.

“I played July Fourth at Damrosch Park (New York) in front of 12,000 people. What are you going to do?

“My motto is, if you can play, you play. I don’t worry about these things. I’m not a purist. I worry simply about the music and the execution of the music. If a person has energy to get across, it’s going to come across, no doubt about it.”

* Dickran Atamian will be piano soloist in Tchaikovsky’s Concerto No. 1 with the Pacific Symphony led by Alasdair Neale on Saturday at 8 p.m. at Irvine Meadows Amphitheatre, 8800 Irvine Center Drive, Irvine. Tickets: $12 to $39.50. Information: (714) 740-2000 (Ticketmaster). AUDITION CALLS: The Orange County Youth Symphony will hold auditions on Saturday in Bertea Hall at Chapman University in Orange. To schedule an appointment, call Victoria Rode at (714) 535-3496. . . . The Orange County Philharmonic Society will audition young musicians, ages 7 to 17, on Nov. 16 for a Jan. 12 recital at Christ College Irvine and for subsequent programs in Orange County elementary and high schools. Musicians must live in or attend school in Orange County. Auditions will be held at Christ College, 1530 Concordia, Irvine. For information, call Ellen Halopoff at (714) 373-3333.