Mozart Expert Romero Scoffs at Type-Casting

Over the years, Gustavo Romero has built an enviable reputation playing Mozart. His elegant interpretations of Mozart piano concertos with Donald Barra’s San Diego Chamber Orchestra and David Atherton’s Mainly Mozart Festival have set a standard of Mozart playing few pianists approach. Monday, the 26-year-old Chula Vista native and winner of Switzerland’s 1989 Clara Haskil Piano Competition returns to La Jolla to perform Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 9 (“Jeunnehomme”) with the San Diego Chamber Orchestra.

But don’t even think of calling him a Mozart “specialist.”

“I hate the word ‘specialist’--it’s so limiting,” Romero said from Wichita Falls, Tex., where he was catching his breath on a U.S. tour after his Oct. 30 debut in Japan.

Although Romero keeps 14 of the 30 Mozart piano concertos in his active repertory, he is not about to settle down into a comfortable niche and accumulate obscure data about a single composer. To him the very notion of a musical “specialist” inspires humor.

“The word makes me laugh. My musical friends and I sit around and make up satirical stories about imaginary specialist performers.”

Despite his facility with Mozart, Romero’s musical interests have always been eclectic. For his debut with the New Japan Philharmonic last month in Yokohama, he chose Saint-Saens’ Second Piano Concerto. When he toured the U.S. with the Liege Philharmonic, he played Rachmaninoff’s Third Piano Concerto. Next month he will play for the first time Shostakovich’s Piano Concerto No. 1 for the Sarasota (Florida) Symphony. His appetite for learning new repertory is great.

“Most of my colleagues learn their new repertory over the summer, then play it for the entire season. I like to learn at least one new concert piece each month, in season and out of season.”

Romero was pleased with his debut performance in Japan, but he was amused by the concert etiquette of the Japanese.

“Five minutes before the concert begins, an announcer requests that everyone in the house turn off the alarm on their electronic watches. When the program begins, the silence in the hall is eerie. They are unusually devoted listeners, giving the performance a level of respect that borders on religious awe. When a piece is over, they reward the performance with applause, but they are too well-mannered to indulge in ‘bravos’.”

Although Romero has lived in New York for the last dozen years, he has been a regular performer on San Diego stages. In January, he played a recital at Copley Symphony Hall for the Community Concert Assn., and in May he appeared in La Jolla with the San Diego Chamber Orchestra. On his upcoming hometown visit, Romero will also play a solo recital on Dec. 6 at 3 p.m. in the Mesa College Apolliad Theatre.

While he is in town, his recording of Joaquin Rodrigo’s Rapsodia Sinfonica with the San Diego Chamber Orchestra on Koch International Classics will be released. Earlier this year, his compact disc of solo works by Debussy and Albeniz for REM hit the record stores.

San Diego Chamber Orchestra conducted by music director Donald Barra; 8 p.m., Nov. 23 at the Torrey Pines Christian Church, La Jolla. Program of Ernest Bloch, Quincy Porter, and Mozart. Tickets $18-$23 (753-2089).

Talmi in Buffalo. Earlier this month, San Diego Symphony music director Yoav Talmi made an impressive debut on the podium of the Buffalo Philharmonic. Buffalo News music critic Herman Trotter praised Talmi as a “conductor who can instinctively reach for the big effect without danger of excess.”

Talmi chose a typically plush Romantic program: Strauss’ tone poem “Don Juan” and Dvorak’s Symphony No. 8 in G Major, with Mozart’s Violin Concerto No. 4 sandwiched in between. Trotter praised the Israeli conductor for keeping the excitement of Strauss’ extroverted work high without overdoing it. And he observed that in Dvorak’s Symphony, Talmi and the orchestra gave “a performance full of bucolic charm, warm and flowing lyricism and a wonderfully natural natural sense of transition between its varying moods.”

Coincidentally, the week after Talmi conducted Dvorak’s Symphony No. 8 in Buffalo, guest conductor Heiichiro Ohyama took the San Diego Symphony though the same work. Talmi returns to San Diego to lead the local orchestra in Schubert’s “Unfinished” Symphony and Mahler’s orchestral song cycle “Das Lied von der Erde” Dec. 4-5.

Hi-ho Silver, away. That familiar sound-of-hoofbeats finale from Rossini’s “William Tell” Overture will become part of a unique $250,000 fund-raising project for the San Diego Symphony. Donors who give $50 to the symphony, or symphony association members who increase their membership level by $50, will “buy” a note of the Rossini piece. Starting next month, at the opening of each concert, the orchestra will play the portion of the Overture that has been purchased.

“There are about 5,000 notes in that piece, if you eliminate the tied notes and the orchestral doublings,” said symphony development director Dean Corey. “When I worked for the Jacksonville Symphony, I counted them when we went on a particularly long run-out concert.”

Corey suggested the project based on the success of the device in Jacksonville, where, he said, the annual subscription goal exceeded its goal with the “William Tell” project.

“We sold so many subscriptions in Florida, that when the orchestra played the Overture at the end of the campaign, they had to repeat a section.”

The San Diego Symphony started selling Rossini notes at the first of November, and according to Corey about 45% of he piece has been sold to date. The orchestra will start playing the overture in December, continuing until they they reach the $250,000 goal.

CRITIC’S CHOICE

Thanksgiving Spirit

The La Jolla Symphony will invoke a bit of Thanksgiving spirit tonight with a program that includes Charles Ives’ clever, nostalgic tone poem “Thanksgiving Day.”

In the orchestra’s 8 p.m. concert at UC San Diego’s Mandeville Auditorium (repeated Sunday at 3 p.m.), music director Thomas Nee will also conduct Elgar’s “Enigma” Variations and Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 4. Pianist Aleck Karis, a member of the UCSD music faculty, will solo in the familiar Beethoven concerto.