Why Previn Sings Praises of La Jolla’s SummerFest : Concerts: The conductor, who is included in the annual event, says ‘the artists are looked after phenomenally well.’

Heiichiro Ohyama, artistic director of the La Jolla SummerFest, gets by with a little help from his friends.

Fortunately for the La Jolla Chamber Music Society, sponsor of the annual chamber music festival that opened Friday and runs through Aug. 30 at Sherwood Auditorium, Ohyama’s circle of friends includes Andre Previn, clarinetist David Shifrin, pianist Yefim Bronfman, and cellist Gary Hoffman, to name but a few.

Previn is unstinting in his praise of SummerFest and Ohyama’s deft direction of the festival, in which the conductor/composer/pianist has participated five of its seven seasons.

“The (SummerFest) artists are looked after phenomenally well, and nobody grinds his teeth at having to work with XYZ. We have a good time together, and it also helps that it is a beautiful place,” Previn said in a phone conversation from his Bedford, N.Y., home.

Ohyama’s and Previn’s mutual admiration goes back to Los Angeles Philharmonic days when Ohyama was principal violist and assistant conductor under Previn’s reign as music director. Since he stepped down from his post as music director of the Philharmonic in 1989, chamber music and composition have assumed greater significance in Previn’s schedule.

Though he holds the title of laureate conductor of the London Symphony Orchestra and spends eight weeks every season leading the Vienna Philharmonic, the 63-year-old musician is now an itinerant guest conductor without a music director’s administrative headaches.

“I miss the unlimited choice of repertory and soloists I had as a music director, but in the U.S., the job is so tied up with speech-making and attending ladies’ luncheons that you can go a little crazy with all of those non-musical activities. But I would never say ‘never’ to being a music director again.”

Besides Previn’s regular appearances at SummerFest, the versatile musician puts together his own series of programs for New York’s Lincoln Center Chamber Music Society, plays a dozen concerts at the summer-long Caramoor Festival in Katonah, N.Y., and has his own chamber series in both London and Vienna.

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“I’ve always told my conducting students who play an instrument well to play as much chamber music as possible. It calls for a different set of ears--in chamber music you hear absolutely everything. And apart from anything educational, chamber music is more fun than anything else.”

Previn listed several of his new chamber works that will be premiered in the upcoming season.

“In the spring in Amsterdam, Yo-Yo Ma will play my new cello sonata, and I have chamber works commissioned by (the Orchestra of) St. Lukes and the Library of Congress. I want to write a piece especially for La Jolla, but I haven’t yet decided what kind of piece it will be.”

At this year’s SummerFest, Previn will play piano trios by Ravel and Debussy with violinist Julie Rosenfeld and cellist Hoffman, and RCA will record the two piano trios the following week in New York. In previous seasons, Previn’s SummerFest gigs have produced recordings of Schumann’s piano quartets, Mozart’s piano quartets and Previn’s own jazz trio.

Previn will also accompany Carol Wincenc in the Prokofiev Flute Sonata and play in Poulenc’s Sextet for piano and winds.

His choice of 20th-Century repertory, like that of Ohyama, favors composers of a more traditional bent. Previn bristled at the very mention of the musical avant garde, although he quickly added that he feels a responsibility to champion contemporary American composers when he performs in Europe.

“There are some awfully good contemporary composers here, such as John Harbison, Steven Stucky and Harold Shapero. I try my best to trundle them across the Atlantic.”

The death of John Cage on Wednesday brought his May, 1991, visit to UC San Diego to mind. The composer attended the premiere of his latest opus for solo violin, played by UC San Diego Prof. Janos Negyesy and accompanied by Mineko Grimmer’s bamboo and ice sound sculpture. Like Cage’s slender, haunting work, the composer’s lithe presence simultaneously combined intense spiritual engagement and self-effacement. The then 78-year-old guru of the avant-garde seemed equal parts sage and wide-eyed kid.

Many observers have catalogued Cage’s revolutionary contributions to 20th-Century music, notably his appreciation of total silence, his invention of the prepared piano and his use of chance as a compositional method. For those who chronicle music’s evolution, these innovations made him noteworthy.

But Cage’s overriding contribution was his approach to every piece of music as an uncharted journey. In an interview before his UCSD visit, Cage described his pleasure experiencing the unpredictable details of a chance work.

“Those all happen in a way that I become a tourist--someone who sees everything for the first time.”

His sense of wonder and the delight of new discovery in music is an attitude that even his harshest critics could laud. Stravinsky once dismissed Cage’s classic silence piece “4’ 33” “ with the derisive comment, “May his silences grow longer.” The sneer became prophecy, however. Cage’s silences did grow longer, in the sense that many listeners began to appreciate both the complexity of silence and the whispers of the spirit that attend a truly quiet soul.

This is the time of year choral organizations recruit new members. David Chase, conductor of the La Jolla Symphony Chorus, will audition singers Aug. 23, Sept. 12, and Sept. 19 at UC San Diego. Singers may phone Beda Farrell at 727-5158 to schedule an audition. Xiomara DiMaio, director of Las Voces vocal ensemble, is looking for singers, especially tenors and hunky baritones who want to sing 20th-Century Latin-American music. Call DiMaio at 294-2049.

CRITIC’S CHOICE

BLAST FROM TEUTONIC PAST

Though the San Diego Symphony rarely plays Wagner, guest conductor Jack Everly is helping to compensate for this oversight with an all-Wagner bash Wednesday at 7:30 p.m. at Embarcadero Marina Park South, the SummerPops site.

Orchestral excerpts from all four “Ring” operas, as well as the overtures to “The Flying Dutchman” and “Tannhauser,” will grace this double-barreled Teutonic blast.