The Prague Symphony Comes West : Music: The orchestra, struggling with an emerging free market economy, makes its local debut at the Orange County Performing Arts Center tonight.

Prague is a city with an extensive musical history, including many important entries in Mozart’s log. Don’t, however, remind Petr Altrichter, music director of the Prague Symphony.

“Too much Mozart! Prague is a Mozart city--so many, many festivals. Of course,” he said, sighing, “we made our own festival too. I am not happy that people forgot that it was a Dvorak anniversary too!”

The year is indeed the 150th anniversary of the Czech master’s birth. But if Prague--like most of the world--has been overwhelmed with Mozartmania, Altrichter and his orchestra usually get an ample dose of Dvorak on tour, anniversary or no.

“Of course, we play the whole range of music,” Altrichter said, “from Haydn and Mozart to contemporary works--we have given many premieres. But on tour mostly we are asked for Czech music--always we must play the ‘New World’ Symphony and ‘Moldau,’ because that’s what people know.”

It is while on tour that Altrichter is speaking now, from his hotel in North Carolina. The Prague Symphony began its U.S. circuit this year in Puerto Rico, moved to New York engagements including Carnegie Hall, on to the Midwest, and back to North Carolina. The orchestra makes its local debut at the Orange County Performing Arts Center tonight--courtesy of the Orange County Philharmonic Society--on the Southwest leg of the trip, which also includes a Community Concerts stop at the California Theater of the Performing Arts in San Bernardino on Tuesday. The tour ends with dates in Florida.

Quite a month, but a typical one for the Prague Symphony. Founded in 1934 as the Symphony Orchestra FOK (Film-Oper-Koncert), the organization currently struggles with the emerging free market economy in Czechoslovakia merely cap a vicissitudinous history.

“The first years were difficult,” Altrichter said. “At first it was a small orchestra, then very big. Just now we number 115 musicians--108 on this tour.

“We are supported by the Prague city government. The money we have from the city is not enough, of course--that’s why we go abroad. Every three years we tour the U.S., every three years we tour Japan, and we always tour Europe. About half our performances we play abroad.”

Those gigs inevitably involve the works of Dvorak and/or Smetana, the most popular Czech composers abroad. Tonight’s local program lists Smetana’s “Wallenstein’s Camp”--a symphonic poem rarely encountered here--Saint-Saen’s Second Piano Concerto, with young Soviet Georgian Elisso Bolkvadze as the soloist, and Dvorak’s Symphony No. 9 (“From the New World”).

“I am sure that (the Dvorak) is really a great piece, of the highest Romantic style,” Altrichter said. “It’s also interesting that it was written in America.

“I must say that the Symphonies No. 8 and No. 7 are great too. Unfortunately, they are not so well known. We have three programs on this tour, one of them including the Symphony No. 6, but we play what our agency says.”

Back in Prague, of course, the programming is more ecumenical. Altrichter, a native Moravian, has a keen interest in French composers and won a special prize for his French interpretations at the Besancon Competition in 1976. He also likes the late German Romantics.

“Whatever I’m doing, what must be for me No. 1,” he said earnestly. “I love very much the music of Bruckner and Mahler. I like it--but I can’t prefer it, you understand.”

Altrichter would like to get to know American music, something lacking any real presence in Prague.

“We have a big repertory--Czech music too, of course, Martinu and Janacek as much as Smetana and Dvorak. We have a little problem with English music--we play Britten but the other composers not so much--and the same with American music.

“For one thing, the connections are not strong enough between American composers and Czech musicians. I have little chance to know American music. There is a financial problem too. It is rather expensive to rent the materials.”

The money problem is not likely to go away any time soon, but this tour may bear some cross-fertilized fruit.

“On my table at home are many, many scores from various kinds of composers, but nothing from America,” Altrichter said. “Something may change, though, because on this tour I’ve been given four scores and I think I will have more before we’re done.”

Altrichter has been music director of the Prague Symphony since 1987 and has been active recording in Czechoslovakia. A disc of late Haydn symphonies was recently released in this country by Stradivari Classics, but Altrichter’s efforts in this area are also hampered by the fiscal crisis at home.

“Recording depends on many problems just now, with the economic situation in Czechoslovakia,” Altrichter said. “The main Czech recording companies are down now, because in Czechoslovakia nobody has any money. We must try to get some connection with an international company.”

Altrichter, who has conducted in Europe, would like to see his career get a transatlantic jump.

“Of course, my great, great wish is to be associated with some good American orchestra. . . . I’m not too well known here.”

Having learned one lesson of capitalistic culture, he said: “It all depends on management.”

The Prague Symphony plays works of Smetana, Saint-Saens (with pianist Elisso Bolkvadze ) and Dvorak tonight at 8 at the Orange County Performing Arts Center, 600 Town Center Drive, Costa Mesa. Tickets: $11 to $32. A free program preview will precede the concert at 7 p.m. Presented by the Orange County Philharmonic Society. Information: (714) 553-2422.