PERFORMING ARTS: CLASSICAL MUSIC, DANCE, OPERA : She’ll Admit She’s a Convert : L.A. Mozart Orchestra conductor Lucinda Carver had to learn to like the music of the 18th century Austrian composer. But now her love is here to stay.

As the conductor of the Los Angeles Mozart Orchestra, Lucinda Carver might be expected to have been a longtime Mozartphile. Truth be told, she had to be prodded.

As a young pianist, Carver was an avowed fan of Joni Mitchell--and the Romantic repertory. “Especially Brahms, Shumann, Schubert,” she says, “and always Bach--above all else--and Beethoven.”

“When I was an undergraduate, I remember my professor saying, ‘Someday, you’ll discover Mozart.’ He mentioned that the best way was to listen to the operas. Growing up in Orange County, I’d hardly been to any concerts, let alone operas. So that summer, after my freshman year, I decided to lock myself up in the library and listen to Mozart operas.

“The piece that did it for me was ‘Don Giovanni.’ With so many of those arias, I thought, ‘This is absolutely sublime.’ It was so pure and so heartfelt, and so full of the gift of melody. All of a sudden, that was it.”

Carver never looked back. Next Saturday at the Wilshire-Ebell Theatre, with the Los Angeles Mozart Orchestra, she will “immerse” herself and the audience in the ensemble’s annual Mozart-only concert. “It’s always my favorite program,” she admits, a few days before Christmas, sitting in the house in Hollywood she uses as a studio. “For me, an all-Mozart program is just nirvana.”

Dressed casually in jeans, hiking boots and a salmon-colored shirt, Carver, 38, speaks in clear rolling rhythms, deferring interview questions, from time to time to her beloved companion, an amiable golden retriever named Aslan. The studio’s centerpiece is a grand piano; in a corner sits a harpsichord, a copy of an instrument from the time of Louis XIV, with an ornate mythological painting on the raised lid.

“The best part about playing this instrument is that, if you’re nervous at all, all you have to do is look up and see that,” she points to an image of a baby’s bare bottom in the painting, “and it sheds a new light on the whole thing.”

Carver, who lives in Burbank, retreats to the Hollywood Hills to work. It’s a more music-friendly neighborhood, she says. “I can practice until two in the morning; no one complains,” she laughs. “In Burbank, they call the police.”

These days, such things are an important consideration: Carver has had a lot to practice for. Last summer at the John Anson Ford Theatre, she conducted the West Coast premiere of Richard Einhorn’s live opera-oratorio “Voice of Light,” fitted as a new soundtrack to Carl Dreyer’s silent film “The Passion of St. Joan.” And just before the Mozart Orchestra season began last fall, she also lead “Voice of Light” as part of the Next Wave Festival at the Brooklyn Academy of Music.

Then, for the Mozart Orchestra season, which started Oct. 21, Carver scheduled six concerts--four with the full orchestra, two with the smaller Mozart Orchestra Chamber Players. That’s double the concerts of previous years, and doesn’t include the outreach concerts in local schools (Carver dresses up like Mozart himself, in wig and breeches, for those). In addition, the ensemble, which releases its first recording--an all-Haydn project--in March, will be in the recording studio for a second CD at the end of January.

And that’s not all. In March, Carver will conduct “Don Giovanni” with the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra and the Minnesota Opera for eight weeks, then go to work preparing the Mozart Orchestra for its first touring engagement, a road show of the Einhorn-”Passion of St. Joan” extravaganza.

In all, the ‘95-’96 season has shaped up well for Carver and the orchestra. “In some ways, it’s miraculous if you look at the economic climate in which all this is happening,” Carver says, seated now at the studio’s kitchen table. “I’ve gotten wonderful foundation and corporate support. Our subscription base is growing.” She pauses, then knocks on the wooden table, laughing.

Carver is a local girl, sort of. She grew up just over the Orange County line, in Seal Beach, determined, she says, to flee O.C. as quickly as possible. “I couldn’t wait to get out. I really felt that I was in a cultural wasteland. This was back a long time ago, before the Performing Arts Center was built.”

After ruling out her family’s desire that she become a doctor, Carver plunged into piano studies. It was at UCSB that she fell for Mozart, although she finished her undergraduate piano degree at Manhattan School of Music. She continued her studies in London and at the Mozarteum in Salzburg, Austria, on a Fulbright grant, and then earned a doctorate in conducting at USC.

It was while studying with pianist Murray Perhia in London that Carver first considered the idea of conducting. Perhia, who had some experience with conducting and composition, conveyed to her the importance of thinking about music with the objective overview of a conductor, even as a pianist. “All of a sudden,” she says, “this seemingly monochromatic instrument becomes an orchestra. It opens up that sense of aural imagination.

“The next step was [being] at the Mozarteum. A friend of mine was one of [Herbert Von] Karajan’s proteges, and he helped me get into the rehearsals for [Salzburg] festival activities. I got to watch Bernstein rehearse, and Karajan, Ozawa, Abbado, all those people. Then I got the bug.”

When Carver returned to the United States in YEAR TK, she headed for the conducting program at USC. But she also continued her piano work. In fact, it was as a soloist that she first encountered the Mozart Orchestra.

Back on her home turf, Carver began “trying to get some gigs, some concerto appearances.” Musician friends steered her toward the Mozart ensemble and its founder and conductor, David Keith. “I auditioned for him playing the Concerto No. 9. He liked my playing very much and engaged me for the following season.” In 1991, when Keith decided to retire, he steered the search committee in the direction of the pianist who was also studying conducting at USC. After a yearlong process of auditions, Carver made the grade from an initial roster of 50 candidates.

Was her gender ever an obstacle in becoming a conductor?

“The only time I ever ran into a little bit of a brick wall,” Carver recalls, “was when I was in Salzburg. I inquired about doing both piano and conducting [and] I was told that, A) I couldn’t do both, and, B) women don’t conduct. I thought, ‘OK, fine, I’ll show you.’ ”

And at the Mozart Orchestra?

“The only time it was a little annoying,” she admits, “was when I first got the job. People were wondering what I was going to wear.”

For Carver, working as a conductor is “the ultimate form of persuasion.” “Of course,” she says, “you want to be so convinced about the music that you can have the others believe in it, [so] everyone plays as one voice, as if that’s how they’re feeling as well. There’s a lot of psychology involved.”

And while conducting is her main pursuit these days, she is still a working pianist. At the concert next Sunday, in fact, she will play and conduct the Piano Concerto No. 23.

Her continuing piano career, she thinks, benefits her work at the podium, just as conducting helped her as a young pianist, and helps her still, to hear the music more completely. “I feel that I have a good camaraderie with my musicians because I am also a player,” Carver says. “I’m willing to get out there and put my tush on the line, just like they do.”

As only the second conductor in the Mozart Orchestra’s history, Carver is well aware of her debt to founder Davis, and of how long he struggled to create what she inherited.

“He had this vision of having a wonderful jewel of an orchestra here in Los Angeles that specialized in 18th century repertoire. He had the tenacity to see it through. I can remember a time when he took a loan out on his life insurance policy to pay the musicians. That’s what it takes, along with a sense of vision.”

Carver programs the ensemble with that vision in mind, but she is also branching out--her old eclecticism still shows. “The ratio of only-18th century music is changing under my tenure. I’m doing it gradually because my audience is conservative. I remember one time we did a chamber concert and played the Poulenc Sextet. I heard some grumbling going on, and that’s a very tame piece.”

In the May 4 concert, in addition to Beethoven and Mozart, the orchestra will play the “New Young Person’s Guide to the Orchestra,” by composer-in-residence Maria Newman. “It’s definitely in a modern vein,” Carver offers. “It’s not Stockhausen, but there are Stravinskian rhythms and harmonies, and various 20th century techniques. So, little by little, I’ve been adding in modern music.

“What I [try] to do is to find works which tie in formally and structurally with older music. There are a lot of 20th Century pieces that are based on earlier forms.”

After four years of mostly Mozart, has Carver found the charm wearing thin? “I can’t imagine that ever happening,” she says. “I’m doing a lot of these pieces for the first time, but I’m also starting to go back to things for the second time, and that’s even better. The sense of discovery of what lies just a few layers down is incredible.”

Ultimately, whatever other musical instincts tug at her, Carver is now Mozartean to the core. “I’m biased, but I do feel that, if there’s anything that will stick around, it’s got to be Mozart.”

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ALL-MOZART PROGRAM with Piano Concerto No. 23 in A major, Overture to “The Magic Flute,” Three Contredances and Symphony No. 34 in C major; Wilshire-Ebell Theatre, 4401 W. 8th St. Date: Jan. 20, 8 p.m. Prices: $22-$30. Phone: (818) 705-5860.