O.C. MUSIC : Conductor Atherton Brings His Balancing Act to Pacific

After founding the London Sinfonietta in 1967, conductor David Atherton became known as an advocate of 20th-Century music, in general, and contemporary music, in particular.

During his tenure leading the San Diego Symphony from 1980 until its demise in 1986 because of a budget crisis (it was later resurrected), he ruffled a few feathers with some adventurous programming.

Now, Atherton, who leads the Pacific Symphony today and Thursday in music by Haydn, Mendelssohn and Stravinsky, argues that he’s not exclusively a contemporary-music specialist.

“People love to pigeonhole everybody,” Atherton, 48, said in a recent phone interview from San Diego. “In many ways, that’s not a bad thing. It’s better, in a sense, to be known for something, rather than for nothing.

“Having said that, I do my damnedest to get a balance through my repertory as a whole. If one can, through the course of a year, have a balance of different kinds of activities and events, that makes for a better musician.”

Atherton, who was born in Blackpool, England, is music director of the Hong Kong Philharmonic and the London Sinfonietta. He is also principal guest conductor of the BBC Orchestra and recently led new productions of Britten’s “Billy Budd” and “Peter Grimes” and Meyerbeer’s “Les Huguenots” for the English National Opera.

Since 1989, he has returned to San Diego each summer to direct the Mainly Mozart Festival, a series of outdoor chamber-music programs.

But that doesn’t lead him to overlook Mozart’s great contemporary--Haydn. Atherton will conduct Haydn’s Symphony No. 90 on the Pacific concerts.

“I find many people underrate Haydn as a composer,” he said. “If they had to take sides between Mozart and Haydn--which I hope they wouldn’t want to do--most would side with Mozart.

“But you have a wealth of musical material in Haydn that you rarely hear. Symphony No. 90 is a wonderful score you don’t hear that often. Haydn’s writing is so unpredictable. It has a freshness about it. It has an individuality that is pure genius.

“There is also a tremendous clarity in Haydn. His thought process is very, very clear, even if there are things at times that are unexpected.”

Atherton says that programming music from Haydn to the present helps keep in balance the differing demands made on him as a conductor.

“The further back you go, the more latitude you have as a performer to bring in what you would loosely call interpretive skills,” he said. “In contrast, one of the benefits of performing contemporary music is that the later you go in music history, the more precise composers are in writing on the page what they want to hear.

“So the degree of interpretation, in its widest sense, is lessened (over time). Accuracy and attention to detail become far more important than what an individual thinks of the meaning of the music.

“In contemporary music, accuracy is paramount. You are constrained by a degree to following what’s on the printed page. Your job is to try to recreate what’s on the page as faithfully as possible and not interpose your own ideas too much. My guiding principal is: What did the composer have in mind? What did he want?”

Atherton suggested that because younger musicians are getting better musical training nowadays, they are able to play more accurately, and learn a piece more quickly, than their predecessors.

“In the last 20 years, in London at least, the quality of musicians coming out of music schools has improved by leaps and bounds,” he said. “In the early ‘70s, performances of Stockhausen took 10 to 15 rehearsals. Now, these young kids come out of school and they do it as second nature.”

Atherton also credits the government and corporate support he gets in Hong Kong, where he began as music director in 1989, with his ability to be “flexible in programming.”

“We can do programming which would be unthinkable elsewhere,” he said. “If you’re dependent on 40% of your revenue coming from box-office return, that stifles adventurousness. Whereas, if you can rest assured you can try new and interesting things without it having too big a dent on a budget, you’re more able to try things out.

“When I first started in Hong Kong,” he recalled, “we did pieces deliberately chosen not to be too demanding on the audience. They would come along and say, ‘We don’t know this composer. But let’s give it a shot.’ Then later: ‘That was not too bad. Let’s try it again.’ Over time, you build a relationship and they trust your judgment in what is new and adventurous.”

* David Atherton conducts the Pacific Symphony in music by Haydn, Mendelssohn and Stravinsky today and Thursday at 8 p.m. at the Orange County Performing Arts Center, 600 Town Center Drive, Costa Mesa. Tickets: $12 to $36. Information: (714) 474-4233.