San Diego Spotlight : Violinist Doesn’t Regret His Career Change a Bit

It did not take the prescience of a Gypsy palm reader to predict that violinist William Preucil would spend his career playing in a string quartet.

For the son of a professional violinist mother and violist father--who has played for the past 33 years in the Stradivarius Quartet--both heredity and environment conspired to send Preucil in that direction. It was not a direct path, however, from his studies at Indiana’s School of Music to the acclaimed Cleveland Quartet.

He spent the early years of his professional career as concertmaster of the Nashville Symphony and then in the same post with the Atlanta Symphony under Robert Shaw. But 2 1/2 years ago, Preucil left Atlanta’s security to join the Cleveland Quartet, replacing Donald Weilerstein as its first violinist.

“I always wanted to play in a string quartet,” Preucil said. “One of the first things I did as a teen-ager was to form a string quartet. I suppose that I gravitated to orchestral playing first because of Joseph Gingold, my teacher at Indiana University. He was a great concertmaster who taught me the major orchestral excerpts, especially the big solos in Strauss and Tchaikovsky. So when it was time to leave school, it seemed only natural to pursue the opening of concertmaster in Nashville.”

The Cleveland Quartet, now in its 24th season, plays on a set of matched Stradivarius instruments once owned by the legendary Niccolo Paganini. At 8 p.m. Sunday in UC San Diego’s Mandeville Auditorium, the prestigious ensemble, which includes violinist Peter Salaff, violist James Dunham and cellist Paul Katz, will perform for the UCSD Chamber Music Series. Well known to local audiences, the 33-year-old Preucil has amply demonstrated his prowess in both the orchestral and chamber music repertory as resident concertmaster for the past three seasons at San Diego’s Mainly Mozart Festival. He noted that playing in the summer festival assuages the pain of having left the Atlanta Symphony.

“What I miss most from orchestra playing is, I suppose, the repertoire, as well as my friends in the Atlanta Symphony. One of the aspects of the June Mozart festival I enjoy is seeing the three or four members of the Atlanta Symphony who regularly play in the festival orchestra.”

Even while Preucil performed and recorded with the Atlanta Symphony, he maintained an active schedule of solo and chamber music, although the specialized repertory of the string quartet was the one genre of chamber music he did not perform.

“We violinists leave the string quartets to the professional quartets who play together all the time,” he said. “It’s the most difficult chamber music medium because its ensemble must be perfect.”

From his Atlanta years, Preucil brought his association with American composer Stephen Paulus to the Cleveland Quartet. As the Atlanta Symphony’s composer in residence, Paulus had written a number of works for the orchestra, including a violin concerto that Preucil premiered. The normally quiet-spoken violinist persuaded his Cleveland Quartet colleagues to commission a string quartet from Paulus, and earlier this season premiered the Minnesota-born composer’s “Quartessence.” This year Cleveland also premiered a quartet by another Minnesota composer, Libby Larsen.

“Over the next three years, we have four other commissions in the works,” Preucil said. “We’re committed to continuing with the ensemble’s tradition of playing at least one new work each year.”

Re-recording the entire Beethoven string quartet canon for Telarc will also occupy Cleveland over the next three years.

“Cleveland’s original Beethoven cycle was done almost 20 years ago on records,” Preucil said. “Now, of course, everyone is interested in CDs.”

With two new members in the ensemble since the first cycle--violist Dunham joined Cleveland in 1987--its different chemistry should provide a sufficiently fresh approach to the 16 Beethoven string quartets to warrant a new set, he said.

As the resident string quartet for the Eastman School of Music in Rochester, N.Y., the Cleveland Quartet coaches aspiring string quartets, especially those in the graduate division. Preucil gives them both warning and encouragement about the field.

“They have to get used to constant travel and long hours of daily practice together,” he said. “For every young quartet just coming on the scene, there are many others, and there are only so many slots for concerts.

“But I’m modestly optimistic about the future, because I think there’s a renewed interest in chamber music in our country--assuming that the economy can support it without much government support.”

King Commemoration. The 120-voice San Diego Community Choir will join the San Diego Symphony at 2 p.m. today in a concert to commemorate the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

Among the choral tributes the massed choir will offer are Hale Smith’s “Lift Every Voice” and Lanny Wolfe’s “For God So Loved the World.” Denis de Coteau, San Francisco Ballet music director, will lead the orchestra in works by African-American composers William Grant Still, Ulysses Kay and Clarence Cameron White. Herb Cawthorne, KGTV-TV news commentator and former director of the San Diego Urban League, will read King’s oft-quoted “Eulogy” as part of the ceremony.

Proceeds will benefit an African-American youth college scholarship program administered by both the San Diego County Interdenominational Ministerial Alliance and the Baptist Ministers Union in San Diego. Tickets are $10 to $25 from the Symphony box office, 699-4205.

CRITIC’S CHOICE

CATHEDRAL ACOUSTICS FOR ECLECTIC PROGRAM

If the highbrow refinement of string quartets leaves you cold, you might look into the high-decibel offerings of Symphony Brass at 7 p.m. Sunday at First United Methodist Church in Mission Valley.

The cathedral acoustics of the large sanctuary should provide the ideal setting for the antiphonal works of Giovanni Gabrieli. Ethan Dulsky will conduct a dozen brass players from the San Diego Symphony on a pleasantly eclectic program that includes composers Paul Hindemith, Aaron Copland and Benedetto Marcello.