Cho-Liang Lin to Premiere Violin Work : Concert: The virtuoso will perform Tyzen Hsiao’s Concerto in D Major with the San Diego Symphony next week.

Giving the first performance of a contemporary violin concerto is almost routine for Cho-Liang Lin. Since 1989, the 32-year-old violinist has premiered three concertos, and Friday through Nov. 15 he will premiere Tyzen Hsiao’s Violin Concerto in D Major with the San Diego Symphony under guest conductor Heiichiro Ohyama.

“I am part of the newer generation of fiddlers that is interested in contemporary music,” Lin said earlier this week in a phone interview from his hotel room in Los Angeles, where he was rehearsing with the Los Angeles Philharmonic. “Other than Isaac Stern, few of the older violinists have actively sought out new music. (Pinchas) Zuckerman and (Itzhak) Perlman have been on the conservative side in choosing their repertory. But playing new music is very healthy. A violinist can only do that many Tchaikovsky and Mendelssohn concertos. Actually, I find I come back to the standard repertory refreshed after I have learned a contemporary piece.”

Lin is no stranger to local audiences. In 1989 he soloed with the San Diego Symphony. And, he has performed at SummerFest, the La Jolla Chamber Music Society’s annual festival, for the last four seasons. A violinist who possesses formidable technique and displays a highly refined sonic brilliance, Lin is one of the premier musicians on the concert circuit. The precocious musician from Taiwan won the Queen Sophia International Competition in Madrid at 17, and even before he finished his Juilliard studies, he had made his debut with many of the world’s leading orchestras. At 21, he became the first violinist from Taiwan to tour mainland China.

Next week’s symphony appearance mates Lin with La Jolla SummerFest artistic director Ohyama. Their collaboration on the Hsiao concerto gives the program a definite Pacific Rim accent. (Ohyama is a native of Japan, and Hsiao, like Lin, is from Taiwan.) Lin said he met the composer six years ago, although he had known him by reputation prior to their introduction by mutual friends. Hsiao may be a household word among the Taiwanese, but he is not well-known in North American musical circles.

“He gave me some violin pieces, short encore type works, which I then played in recital. His Violin Concerto was finished in 1988, but I was already committed to premiering these other concertos and couldn’t do it then. Hsiao’s concerto was played in recital with piano accompaniment, but this will be its first performance with the intended orchestra part.”

Like Lin, Hsiao emigrated to the United States to pursue his musical career. A prolific composer--his Violin Concerto is opus 50--Hsiao now makes his home in Los Angeles. The Taiwanese United Fund, a foundation that supports projects by Taiwanese artists, commissioned his Violin Concerto and is sponsoring next week’s symphony concerts.

Lin explained that the Taiwanese United Fund, based in Upland, Calif., was formed by Taiwanese intelligentsia who settled in Southern California in the 1970s.

“In Taiwan there is a fairly strong distinction between the Taiwanese and the Chinese who arrived in 1949, after the Communists came into power. And there was at one time a great deal of tension between those two sides, even though they are both ethnically Chinese. The Taiwanese United Fund was started to keep people aware of the repression of the Taiwanese by the Chinese, but as the tensions subsided--now the president of Taiwan is Taiwanese--the foundation turned its focus to promoting cultural rather than political awareness.”

Lin noted that in addition to the political differences between the Chinese and Taiwanese, the indigenous music of each culture also has a different character.

“Although there are slight differences in melodic style, it is easy to discern the harmonic difference. Most Taiwanese traditional music is in the minor mode, but Chinese traditional music is either major or pentatonic.”

The middle movement of Hsiao’s Violin Concerto is based on a traditional Taiwanese folk song “Oxen Plowing in The Field.” Lin described Hsiao’s idiom as quite conservative by contemporary standards.

“It is a style of music that should have immediate appeal to audiences. The composer uses little dissonance; he is an unabashed Romantic.”

Guest conductor Heiichiro Ohyama leads the San Diego Symphony in Brahms’ “Academic Festival” Overture, Dvorak’s Symphony No. 8, and Tyzen Hsiao’s Violin Concerto with violinist Cho-Liang Lin; Copley Symphony Hall, Nov. 13-14 at 8 p.m., and Nov. 15 at 2 p.m.

French connection. San Diego Opera’s associate conductor and music director Karen Keltner will address the local chapter of the Alliance Francaise Nov. 14 at 2 p.m. at the University of San Diego’s University Center Forum. A specialist in French opera repertory, Keltner studied in France with noted pedagogue Nadia Boulanger. She will conduct San Diego Opera’s first production of Bizet’s “Les Pecheurs de Perle” March 27 to April 7. Although Keltner will give her talk in English, she will take questions in either French or English.

Pearls before pupils. Last week, pianist Jeffrey Biegel performed at six schools from Carlsbad to National City as part of the La Jolla Chamber Music Society’s fledgling educational outreach program. Biegel, a confident 31-year-old American musician, ended his short residency with a Sherwood Auditorium recital Sunday. In the schools, he performed for students, answered their questions about music and performers, and took requests from the audience. Turning current rock hits into piano solos impressed many students, even more than Biegel’s examples from his classical repertory, according to society Executive Director Neale Perl. Some 1,100 students, from kindergarten pupils to university undergraduates, attended Biegel’s itinerant show.

The society’s next outreach artists, flutist Marina Piccinini and pianist Andres Haeflinger, will arrive the last week of January, followed by classical saxophonist Gary Louie in February and the Borromeo String Quartet in April. Visits by these outreach artists to local schools are entirely underwritten by the society. Interested schools should call the society at 459-3724.

CRITIC’S CHOICE

ARIOSO WIND QUINTET

The Arioso Wind Quintet, one of the area’s finest chamber ensembles, will play a free noon-hour concert Monday at the La Jolla Athenaeum. Their fare will include Mozart’s F Minor Fantasia, K. 608, Schifrin’s “La Nouvelle Orleans,” and a collection of 18th-Century Hungarian dances.