Kakhidze’s Got Georgia on His Mind : Native of Former Soviet Republic to Conduct Moscow Philharmonic at Costa Mesa Concert

During the height of the Cold War, U.S. screenwriters and novelists freely indulged in fantasies of Russian military invasions. Scenarios included hordes of Soviet militarytypes parachuting into Iowa and taking over the U.S. countryside town by town. Ironically, now that the Cold War is over, the old cry “the Russians are coming!” has come true. But the invasion is artistic--not military.

The most recent invading musical armada is the Moscow Philharmonic, which opened a 30-day, 18-city U.S. tour March 14 in Brooklyn. Tonight, the orchestra stops at the Orange County Performing Arts Center in Costa Mesa, two days before concluding its cross-country sojourn in San Diego.

The 114-member orchestra is touring under the leadership of two guest conductors, Jansug Kakhidze and Mark Erlmer. When the New York presenter, ICM Artists, put the tour together, Moscow Philharmonic music director Dimitri Kitayenko had recently resigned his post, and the orchestra was temporarily without a music director.

Kakhidze, who will conduct the Costa Mesa concert, is not Russian--he is an immensely patriotic Georgian who is adviser and chief conductor of both the State Symphony of Georgia and the Paliashvili Opera of Tbilisi--but he is known in the United States.

In 1988, he made his North American debut at Boston’s much-heralded and controversial “Making Music Together Festival,” where he conducted the American premiere of Rodion Shchedrin’s opera “Dead Souls.” He also has conducted in San Diego: he led a production of “Boris Godunov” in 1989 and fronted the San Diego Symphony in 1990. Erlmer, long associated with Moscow’s Bolshoi Opera and Britain’s Royal Opera Covent Garden, is known in the West primarily through his opera recordings.

Though there is nothing overtly political about the Moscow Philharmonic’s tour, the presence of two Shostakovich symphonies in the touring repertory has overtones of the demise of communism. (The orchestra will play the Fifth Symphony in Costa Mesa and the Tenth in San Diego.)

“If we are to connect music to politics,” Kakhidze said, “I think that Shostakovich was highly political, at least from the time of his Fourth Symphony and his opera ‘Lady Macbeth.’ He was able to portray in his music the suffering of the Soviet people, of all people who fell under this terrible weight of communism,” he said by phone from his hotel room on a tour stop in Florida.

“In his own way, Shostakovich was constantly calling the suffering people to salvation, if you will.”

The Shostakovich Fifth Symphony, although purported to be the composer’s submission to the musical constraints of Soviet Realism, has been understood since the composer’s death as a parody of the Communist Party’s official musical dogma. And the Tenth Symphony, written months after Stalin’s demise, has been interpreted as an indictment of the dictator’s tyranny. Kakhidze acknowledged, however, that Shostakovich needed to churn out the occasional patriotic chorus and bland movie score to appease the Soviet government’s musical censors.

“He composed some materials in praise of the party, but I do not consider this something bad. He had to survive in his environment in order to have the opportunity to speak to his people and call them to change.”

The amount of conducting Kakhidze does away from his native Georgia tends to ruffle the feathers of his countrymen.

“For the past five years or so, I could say that about five months out of the season I spend working in the West. At home in Tbilisi, some people are getting upset.”

His conducting tours, however, have benefited the Georgian State Symphony directly and indirectly. On his last visit to Washington, for example, he purchased enough strings for all the bows in his orchestra. Not only was there a shortage of bow string in Georgia, but the players’ salaries have not risen to meet the massive inflation of recent years.

“These are very difficult times. Our musicians never received a good salary, and now that everything has become 10 or 50 times as expensive as it used to be, we have had some musicians who have left--not many, but some--and it’s very difficult to find replacements.”

When the orchestra’s new concert hall was nearing completion last year, Kakhidze reached into his earnings from abroad and produced sufficient hard currency--British pounds sterling--to pay for some of the interior furnishings when government funding ran out.

As Georgia and the rest of the former Soviet Union attempt to convert to a market economy, arts organizations--long accustomed to complete government subsidy--are learning toe adopt Western methods of financing.

“After we opened our new concert hall, we organized a patrons-of-music association. We have very many music lovers who, we hope, would like to be part of that club of patrons and are ready to provide a large contribution in order to enhance the musical world in our country.”

Despite Georgia’s political instability and the bloodshed over former President Zviad Gamsakhurdia’s removal, Kakhidze is confident that his countrymen will return to more civilized behavior. Just last week, President Bush recognized the Republic of Georgia under the new leadership of former Soviet Foreign Minister Eduard A. Shevardnadze.

“From a distance, it appears that Georgians are just killing each other,” Kakhidze said. “But, in truth, the battle is being fought for justice and real democracy. I’m confident that, if there is some assistance from the West, in the near future it will all come together there. It cannot be that a country of such high cultural heritage would not be able to define the correct path in contemporary civilization.”

Jansug Kakhidze conducts the Moscow Philharmonic in the Overture to Weber’s “Oberon,” Tchaikovsky’s Violin Concerto (with soloist Maxim Vengerov), and Shostakovich’s Fifth Symphony tonight at 8 at the Orange County Performing Arts Center, 600 Town Center Drive, Costa Mesa. $14 to $40. Presented by the Orange County Philharmonic Society. (714) 646-6277.