San Diego Spotlight : Teen-Age Pianist Tunes Up for S.D. Symphony Debut

Nathaniel Moore, the 17-year-old pianist who makes his debut with the San Diego Symphony next week, suffers an unusual performer’s syndrome.

“I’m never nervous before I play. I only get nervous after a competition or a performance. I hear the audience clapping, and I wonder whether they really liked my playing or if they’re just glad it’s over.”

Last month, Moore won the symphony’s annual Young Artist’s Concerto Competition. Besides receiving the $500 cash prize, Moore will play the first movement of Prokofiev’s First Piano Concerto with the orchestra in four young people’s concerts Wednesday and Thursday.

His San Diego Symphony debut is not, however, his first time playing with an orchestra. He has appeared with both the North County Civic Youth Orchestra and the La Jolla Symphony. Under his teacher, Jane Smisor Bastien, Moore has developed a taste for 20th-Century Russian music, learning concertos by Kabalevsky and Khachaturian.

“Russian contemporary music is extremely technical and very flashy,” he said. “It takes a huge amount of concentration to play, but the rewards are greater than, say, playing a Mozart or Beethoven concerto.”

A senior at Poway High School, Moore has his sights set on attending the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, where he will give an audition next month. He is as eager to pursue composition as he is to continue his keyboard studies.

“My dream career would be to compose and perform movie music. I’ve always been a big movie fan--it’s a complete sensory experience. Also, the pay is better for film composers.”

Though Mozart had written several operas by the time he was Moore’s age, Moore has a short but respectable list of compositions to his credit, including a piano suite and an untitled chamber work for piano, flute, clarinet and bassoon.

“I just call it Op. 1, No. 3 because I hate coming up with titles.”

When Moore entered high school, he decided to learn to play the flute, but then switched to bass trombone. Because he was already an accomplished keyboard player, his friends thought it was odd to start another instrument.

“It’s hard to march with a piano,” was his retort.

Chamber-Made. “Chamber Music in Historic Sites,” the highly respected chamber series sponsored by Los Angeles’ Mt. St. Mary’s College, is offering a weekend of music performance in local venues March 21-22. A similar locally based series of performances in architecturally significant sites around San Diego County folded two seasons ago. Fortunately, the Los Angeles group has filled the vacuum left by that demise.

The Angeles String Quartet will give two concerts: string quartets by Beethoven, Schubert and Ravel in the Versailles Ballroom of the Westgate Hotel at 11 a.m. March 21, and a different program, with pianist Delores Stevens, in North Park’s Silvergate Masonic Temple at 11 a.m. March 22.

Although one may quibble about the “historic” nature of the Westgate’s patently faux rococo interior decoration, the zigzag moderne and Egyptian Temple motifs adorning the North Park temple seem more architecturally worthy. Appropriately, Stevens and the Angeles Quartet will play works by Masonic composers, including Beethoven’s Piano Trio, Op. 1, No. 1, on their Sunday program.

Besides the chamber music offerings, the Chorus Angelorum of Los Angeles will sing Renaissance and 19th-Century Anglican liturgical music in St. Paul’s Episcopal Cathedral at 8 p.m. March 21. Tickets can be charged by phone by calling (213) 747-9085.

Mozart preview. For music aficionados who have recovered from the Mozart deluge of last year’s Mozart bicentennial, San Diego’s Mainly Mozart Festival has scheduled a free sneak preview of its upcoming June festival. On Feb. 26 at the Spreckels Theatre, music director David Atherton will host the 6 p.m. open house, which will present UC San Diego pianist Aleck Karis playing Mozart sonatas and soprano Debra McLaren singing Mozart opera arias.

Subscriptions to the May 30-June 7 festival will be sold at the open house. Although the February preview is free, tickets are required and may be picked up at any of the Horton Plaza customer service carts.

More free concerts. Though the economy is tight and the price of concert tickets continues to rise, the number of local free concert series is growing.

Besides the longstanding “Monday Mini-Concerts” held at the La Jolla Athenaeum and in downtown San Diego’s Lyceum Theatre, San Diego State University has launched a new Wednesday noon recital series. On Wednesday, two members of the SDSU music faculty, flutist Beth Ross-Buckley and Marian Rian Hays, will perform a duo recital in Room 113 of the Music Building.

The weekly series will continue through May 13, although no concert will be given April 15 during the university’s spring break.

CRITIC’S CHOICE

LONG BEACH SYMPHONY AT FALLBROOK AUDITORIUM

Under the leadership of JoAnn Falletta, the Long Beach Symphony has enjoyed a musical renaissance. The talented young American conductor brings her orchestra to Fallbrook’s Bowers Auditorium at 4:30 p.m. Sunday for a concert of Barber, Elgar and Liszt.

Pianist Janina Fialkowska will be featured in Liszt’s First Piano Concerto and his “Totentanz,” the flamboyant and slightly vulgar paraphrase on the “Dies Irae.”