CHRISTOF PERICK : A Chamber Orchestra in Changing Times

The new season will see new music directors take official control across the orchestral board locally, from Esa-Pekka Salonen at the Los Angeles Philharmonic to Lucinda Carver at the Los Angeles Mozart Orchestra. All face increased financial and cultural pressures, forcing re-examination of the identity of the classical orchestra and its public mission.

A key role there may be played by Christof Perick and the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra. Striking something of a mean in program, personnel and budget size, the Chamber Orchestra also supplies the pit band for most Music Center Opera performances and has appeared for the Philharmonic at Hollywood Bowl.

Last month, Perick’s first concert as music director of the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra was literally greeted with fanfare, and his inaugural program held an important world premiere, Mel Powell’s “Settings for Small Orchestra,” specially commissioned by the orchestra. The orchestra has just released its first recording in several years, a Haydn program that is also Perick’s first CD released in this country.

But while celebration rules musically, there has been much cause for concern. Earlier in the year, the Chamber Orchestra trimmed two programs from its season in a budget-tightening move, and just before the opening concert its top administrators--executive director Deborah Rutter and general manager Welz Kauffman--resigned to take positions in Seattle and Atlanta, respectively.

Perick, born in 1946 and trained in the opera houses of Germany, first conducted the Chamber Orchestra in 1985, for Deutsche Oper Berlin performances of “Le Nozze di Figaro” imported by Music Center Opera. He has since been a regular guest with the Chamber Orchestra and has also conducted the Los Angeles Philharmonic.

This week he leads the Chamber Orchestra in a French program, Wednesday at Ambassador Auditorium, Thursday at UCLA’s Royce Hall and next Sunday at the Orange County Performing Arts Center. Next month he conducts Richard Strauss’ “Ariadne auf Naxos” for Music Center Opera, with his orchestra in the pit.

On a busy day last month, Perick talked between meetings about the promise and problems of the Chamber Orchestra.

Question: In an area with many orchestras, large and small, specialized and generalist, what do you see as the place of the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra?

Answer: The chamber orchestra is, of course, the voice for adequate Baroque music, for the real Viennese classic music, but also for contemporary and what I call “classical modern” music. There are Bartoks, and Schoenbergs, and Alban Bergs, and so on, all of these composers which you will find on our menu, this and the next year.

So this is what I think the Chamber Orchestra should be. We should not be another orchestra to perform Brahms, to perform Tchaikovsky, to perform Mahler, to perform Strauss--the big tone poems. That’s what we should not do, and I will be very careful in not touching that repertoire.

I may do that for myself, because the rest of the year I’m involved in that only ! And that’s why I’m so lucky to be with this wonderful group here, because it’s a refreshment for me and a really good change to come back to roots in the Haydn symphonies.

Q: Speaking of Haydn, you have your new recording coming out. Do your recording plans conform to this identity of the orchestra?

A: Yes. This is significant. We started with a Haydn CD. The next recording is chamber orchestra music by Richard Strauss. And maybe one of the next recordings, which we haven’t set up now, may be Schoenberg. And the next one may be-- may be, question mark--Mel Powell or John Harbison. Our plan is to have five recordings in the next five years.

Q: What does recording mean to the orchestra? Does it help the morale of the players?

A: Yes, of course. It helps a lot. It helps the ego, it helps selling the product--as people are used to saying in California. It’s important for an orchestra.

Recording should be something where we really feel we are at our best. That we have done something that is worth being on record, something which we have rehearsed and which we have performed a couple of times before. I’m not very much interested in just going because somebody is giving us a chance to record, to just sit down and do something.

Q: Has the sound of modern recordings influenced the sound of live concerts?

A: No. I don’t think so.

But, remember, when we as students were able to listen to old recordings, they were technically poor recordings. There was not a great chance to listen to “Tristan” conducted by Furtwangler with Kirsten Flagstad. You just heard the piece --that’s how I did it. You were thrilled by the piece, and you didn’t listen to the fine art of how the orchestra--the strings or the brass--were playing. They were just poor technical recordings, and also, we have to say, 30 or 40 or 50 years ago, poor orchestra playing.

Now, if I have a “Tristan” performance, I always have the feeling, well, boy we have to be good, because they’ve all just heard Kleiber or Karajan or whomever. We have to be good. And this has changed over the run of the last 10, 15 years.

It means we have to be better. People are not listening to “Tristan” anymore because it is the world’s greatest piece. They are listening to how-do- they -play-”Tristan”-tonight, compared to. . . . That’s how I feel I am affected by the recording industry. Sometimes I wish we could be back to times when the music counted, not so much the interpretation. Sometimes.

Q: Do you pay attention to what other orchestras are doing when you prepare the schedule for the Chamber Orchestra, to avoid or to complement what they are doing?

A: It’s not really possible. What we try to do is get along with the Philharmonic. There’s a certain repertoire--not really very much--where we do the same stuff. I mean, of course, we play Schuberts, Beethovens, Haydns and Mozarts.

On the other hand, it differs so very much, from how a big orchestra does it and how we do it. Last year I did Beethoven No. 1 with the Philharmonic, and this year we are doing Beethoven No. 4 with the Chamber Orchestra. And to answer your next question, I like much better what we are able to do with the Chamber Orchestra, for obvious reasons.

Q: You also share much repertory with period-instrument groups.

A: I think it is very interesting to listen to groups specialized in authentic interpretations. But I don’t think we are able to copy what people did 200 years ago.

Frankly, I myself cannot do it, because we have to listen to the music of the great masters like Mozart and Haydn with our ears and we perform that in our times, and for our audiences. We should deal with that with our violins, our oboes, our instruments.

Q: You’ve had to cut two programs, and now you have lost your top two administrators. Is the orchestra in a bad financial situation?

A: The financial situation--as far as I, not being a businessman and on top of that being a European musician, know--the financial situation is not bad. It’s not frightening. It is difficult, like everybody’s financial situation at the moment.

On the other hand, I just came out of meetings about our next season, and we have a very, very solid season. We are going back from 11 concerts to 12 subscriptions. We are in a position to do that.

What is difficult these days is that we lost Deborah Rutter and Welz Kauffman. Both of them got good jobs in other places. It’s a very difficult situation for me, because I was used to these guys. I was a guest conductor here for years. They talked me into this job, and then they left!

Q: In the aftermath of the spring riots, we’ve heard a lot about the arts healing the city. Is that something the arts can, or should, do? If so, what is the role of the Chamber Orchestra in that?

A: It can, I think it can. It should be possible. But the problem is that homeless people can’t buy a ticket and go to our concerts.

I don’t know the answer for that, but it would be lovely if we could make our music available to people who don’t have money to pay for it. I myself would do this, of course, without a fee. But it takes more than just a conductor. The conductor doesn’t make the music, the musicians play. Sometimes you have to remember that--and I’m a violinist, so I know. I never forget that the baton doesn’t make the music.