Pianist Tocco to Shake Dust From Corigliano’s Concerto

John Corigliano is riding a wave of adulation that American composers rarely enjoy. Despite critics’ grumblings and reservations, the 53-year-old New Yorker knows how to win audiences.

Earlier this season, his splashy new opera, “The Ghosts of Versailles”--the first Metropolitan Opera premiere in 25 years--proved a box office bonanza, and his First Symphony, composed as a memorial to friends and colleagues who died of AIDS, has been played with unusual frequency by major American orchestras since its Chicago Symphony debut (and subsequent Erato recording) in 1990.

Pianist James Tocco will perform Corigliano’s Piano Concerto, an early and virtually unknown work, with the San Diego Symphony under guest conductor Grzegorz Nowak on Thursday and Feb. 15. In a phone conversation from the pianist’s home in Ohio, Tocco, who is artist in residence at the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory, stated that, like the composer’s First Symphony, the Piano Concerto is a real crowd-pleaser.

“Although the concerto, which was written in 1968, is more traditional than the First Symphony, it’s a large, brilliantly orchestrated work. And I don’t mind saying it has a fiendishly difficult piano part. It’s a very American piece, an extension of the main body of musical composition informed by the rhythms of Copland and the neo-romantic harmonies of Barber.”

Unlike Corigliano’s concertos for clarinet and oboe, his Piano Concerto never caught on. Tocco placed the blame on its unconvincing first performance with the far from mainstream San Antonio Symphony.

“Hilde Somer, a real champion of new music, commissioned the piece and played its premiere. From a recording she made of it, I don’t think she could handle the technical demands of the score.”

Tocco first performed Corigliano’s Piano Concerto in 1970, but the struggle to persuade conductors to program the unknown work proved daunting. He was supposed to play it with the Milwaukee Symphony on its 1973 tour, but that commitment fell through at the last moment. New-music advocate Lawrence Leighton Smith agreed to put it on a program with the Phoenix Symphony in 1989, and since then, Tocco has played it in Las Vegas, Atlanta and Detroit.

Although Tocco plays the standard keyboard repertory from Mozart to Chopin to Liszt, he is also an unabashed champion of 20th-Century American music. For Pro Arte, he has recorded Leonard Bernstein’s complete solo piano music, as well as Aaron Copland’s piano music. He has also recorded the complete keyboard works of Charles Tomlinson Griffes, the under-appreciated turn-of-the-century American impressionist composer.

A protege of noted Chilean pianist Claudio Arrau, Tocco made his mark winning first prize in the 1973 Munich International Music Competition of the ARD. He explained that over the past 20 years, he has sent out hundreds of letters to conductors and managers to call their attention to American works. In terms of programming, the results of his advocacy have been underwhelming.

“I enjoy mainstream music, too, but I think orchestras and audiences are looking to discover new things,” he said. “I don’t think that all audiences are lazy listeners.”

Keene interest. A television crew from the CBS “Sunday Morning” program will descend on San Diego Opera’s dress rehearsal of Benjamin Britten’s “The Rape of Lucretia” on Feb. 27 at the Civic Theatre.

The popular program hosted by Charles Kuralt is doing a feature on “Rape” conductor Christopher Keene. As general director of the New York City Opera, Keene has breathed new life into the company that works in the very shadow of the Met. According to the San Diego company, the CBS producers wanted to get some footage of Keene outside his New York City environs, so he suggested the San Diego Britten production.

The dress rehearsal audience here is largely made up of schoolchildren from the city and county, so it is congruent with Keene’s oft-quoted concern to find and build opera audiences.

La Jolla winners. Three young musicians have taken top honors in the Feb. 1-2 Young Artists Competition sponsored by the La Jolla Symphony and Chorus (the new name of the former La Jolla Civic-University Symphony Orchestra and Chorus).

Soprano Leann Sandel took first place in the vocal division, and Hong Lin, a 20-year-old Chinese pianist who landed in La Jolla several years ago, earned top honors in the senior instrumental division. Twelve-year-old violinist Ben Jacobson won the junior instrumental division.

All three musicians will be presented in concert with the La Jolla Symphony at UC San Diego’s Mandeville Auditorium on June 7, as well as at Tijuana’s Cultural Arts Center on June 9.

Musical chairs. In auditions held last month at Copley Symphony Hall, Karen Dirks won the San Diego Symphony’s long-vacant principal viola chair.

Currently the orchestra’s first associate principal violinist, Dirks was co-concertmaster during the 1987-88 season. She will continue to keep up her violin chops as concertmaster of the San Diego Opera Orchestra.

Two other violists will join the symphony: Quing Liang, previously first-chair violist with the USC Chamber Orchestra, will begin this month, and Kai Tang from the Honolulu Symphony will join the local orchestra in time for the summer season.

CRITIC’S CHOICE

STRONG CAST READY FOR MOZART OPERA

The San Diego Opera has assembled one of its strongest casts for tonight’s performance of Mozart’s evergreen opera buffa “Le Nozze di Figaro.”

Australian baritone John Pringle sings the wily Figaro and Cheryl Parrish is Susanna, David Malis is Count Almaviva and Rita Cullis is the Countess. Edoardo Muller, everyone’s favorite on the podium, will conduct, and Carl Toms’ stylish San Francisco Opera production makes its local debut.

Civic Theatre curtain times are 7 p.m. today and Tuesday and 8 p.m. Feb. 14.