MUSIC / DANCE : South Coast Symphony Is Scratching a Niche

South Coast Symphony will open its 1991-92 season on Saturday at the Irvine Barclay Theatre with three works the orchestra has never played before.

The concert includes Darius Milhaud’s “Suite Provencale,” Prokofiev’s Piano Concerto No. 3 (with Stephen Prutsman as soloist) and Elgar’s “Enigma Variations.”

“Everything on the program is a first for us,” says South Coast music director Larry Granger. “We don’t do many repeats. With five concerts a year, that’s not hard. There is too much music.”

The orchestra also is embarking this season on an effort to “define our niche a little better.” This means, says Granger, playing “lesser-known works by some well-known composers and lesser-known works by lesser-known composers.”

Lesser-known composers such as Joseph Boulogne St. George, a black composer who was a contemporary of Mozart’s (on the Feb. 8 concert), Libby Larson (Nov. 2) and African-American composer George Walker (May 16).

But for the opening program, Granger is stealing a year’s march on the 100th anniversary of Milhaud’s birth by playing one of this better-known composer’s lesser-known works.

“I had the opportunity to play under Milhaud in the mid-’60s when I was principal oboist in the Cal State Long Beach Orchestra,” Granger recalls. “I played (“Suite Provencale”) under him. It’s based on 18th-Century folk songs from the south of France but includes rhythms and (musical) idioms from Brazil and American jazz.

“It’s all a mixture of that, which in a number of ways spells out what I’m trying to do with our repertory this year--broaden the scope of what one normally hears in the concert hall.”

With all the attention paid this year to the 200th anniversary of Mozart’s death, the 100th anniversary of Prokofiev’s birth was overlooked in some musical quarters. So Granger programmed his Piano Concerto No. 3 for the opening concert.

Prutsman, the soloist, was the fourth-place winner at the 1990 International Tchaikovsky Competition in Moscow. “He was the audience favorite,” Granger says, “and the highest ranking American at the competition. This particular concerto was one that got rave response in Moscow.”

The Elgar piece “is a favorite of mine,” Granger says. “It’s made up of statements about his immediate favorites. . . . It balances the other pieces nicely. It’s more Romantic in scope and nature.”

Since April, when he became music director of the Santa Cruz County Symphony, Granger has divided his conducting time between Costa Mesa and the Northern California coastal community.

“I’m up in Santa Cruz for two weeks, then down here for two weeks,” he says. “That’s pretty much the way it works through the season.”

It’s an exciting time, he says, but “South Coast Symphony will always be very important to me because I was instrumental in starting it. Santa Cruz will always be very important to me because it’s the first position I won in a competition.”

What: John Larry Granger conducting the South Coast Symphony.

When: Saturday, Oct. 5, at 8 p.m.

Where: Irvine Barclay Theatre, 4242 Campus Drive, Irvine.

Whereabouts: On the UC Irvine campus, on Campus Road near University Drive, across from the Marketplace mall.

Wherewithal: $9 to $25.

Where to Call: (714) 662-7220.