MUSIC / KENNETH HERMAN : Pianist Forges Link to Masters for New Generation of Listeners : James Tocco, a Pacific Symphony soloist, is devoted to bridging popular tunes to traditional symphonic literature.

Attracting a younger audience to orchestral performances has always been a challenge, and luring the visually oriented MTV generation into the concert hall is no exception. Pianist James Tocco believes that choosing the right music is the solution to the problem that nags music administrators who look beyond the graying audiences that currently populate symphony halls.

“The younger generation cannot relate to music that was composed 100 years ago without having a bridge, composers of today who are involved with serious music and understand the culture and the background of today’s youth,” Tocco said by phone from New York. “The new generation will not relate to an institution that is solely devoted to preserving the past.”

The 48-year-old American musician, known for his recordings of piano music by Leonard Bernstein and Aaron Copland, is a highly vocal advocate of accessible contemporary music. He has played John Corigliano’s Piano Concerto with several American orchestras, including the San Diego Symphony in February.

“I champion music by composers readily identified as American, who are not afraid to speak in the vernacular,” he said.

Although it is Beethoven’s Fourth Piano Concerto that Tocco will play with the Pacific Symphony tonight and Thursday at the Orange County Performing Arts Center, music director Carl St.Clair has programmed “Bright Blue Music” by the young American composer Michael Torke to open each concert. Torke’s style, a fusion of rock, jazz and classical influences, represents what Tocco sees as the necessary bridge from popular music to traditional symphonic literature.

“I’m happy to see the trend in serious music away from the rigorous intellectualism of the 1950s and ‘60s to a music that is more eclectic. I think it’s a healthy sign. All of the composers we now recognize as classical--whose music has stood the test of time--have drawn upon the popular music of their day. They simply refined it and rarefied it into a more serious form.”

Although Tocco’s personal predilections have lead him into the arena of contemporary music, his studies with Chilean pianist Claudio Arrau put him in touch with the 19th Century. Considered one of the foremost Beethoven interpreters of his generation, Arrau traced the lineage of his pedagogy directly back to Beethoven. Arrau considered the lore and traditions he taught to have come from the master himself.

“When I studied Beethoven’s Fourth Piano Concerto with Arrau, he tended to emphasize the literary and spiritual elements in the music. For instance, the trill at end of the slow movement in the Fourth Concerto represents the trembling of the soul before the Godhead.”

Arrau made a convincing case that the entire slow movement was a grand depiction of the Greek legendary hero Orpheus taming the Furies at the entrance to Hades, Tocco said. Although he is loathe to accept this fanciful interpretation literally, or to believe that Beethoven actually meant to depict the ancient myth in his concerto, Tocco nevertheless is drawn to Arrau’s Romantic symbolism.

“I think it’s good to get away from mere technical considerations because it sets my imagination free. The element of the eloquent lyrical voice of the piano causing the strings to soften and finally submit to its will can be beautifully expressed by the idea of Orpheus and the Furies.”

Despite Arrau’s absorption in poetic imagery, he did not allow himself or his students to take liberties with the score.

“He was faithful to the printed text. He would not even consider altering a note or dynamic marking.”

Arrau stressed above all other considerations the element of struggle in Beethoven’s music and the fallacy of attempting to smooth over the seemingly awkward parts of a Beethoven score.

“He taught me to reflect the composer’s struggle in a very physical way, because the music of Beethoven was in a way a metaphor for his own life’s struggle.”

* The Pacific Symphony plays Torke’s “Bright Blue Magic”; Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 4 (with soloist James Tocco) and excerpts from Prokofiev’s “Romeo and Juliet” at 8 p.m. at the Orange County Performing Arts Center, 600 Town Center Drive, Costa Mesa. $13 to $37. Also Thursday. (714) 755-5799.