Have Cello, Will Travel

The Pacific Symphony is certainly getting more bow for its buck out of its principal cellist these days. Timothy Landauer will be featured at five orchestra-sponsored events this weekend.

He’ll twice play concerts back-to-back, serving as concerto soloist in the late afternoon then scooting cross-county for chamber-music events in the evening. Tonight, he’ll hold to chamber music.

How does he stay fresh in the face of such musical rigors?

“Can I get back to you on that?” Landauer said earlier this week.

Saturday and Sunday, the 33-year-old Shanghai-born and -reared musician plays the Shostakovich Cello Concerto No. 1 with the Pacific Symphony Institute in the Little Theatre at Cal State Fullerton.

Also on the program are Brahms’ “Academic Festival Overture” and Beethoven’s Mass in C with the University Singers and vocal soloists Suzanne Harmon, Janet Smith, Mark Goodrich and Eugene Long.

On the podium will be the orchestra’s outgoing assistant conductor, Edward Cumming, newly named assistant of the Pittsburgh Symphony.

Friday and Sunday, Landauer joins fellow Pacific Symphony musicians--violinist Amy Sims, violist Robert Becker, viola and pianist John Novacek--and guest violinist Byung-Woo Kim for programs including Mozart’s Piano Quartet in E-flat and Schumann’s Piano Quintet, bringing to a close this season’s chamber series at Bowers Museum of Cultural Art in Santa Ana.

The same agenda concludes the orchestra’s chamber series at Laguna Beach High School Artists’ Theatre on Saturday.

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It proved virtually impossible to reach Landauer last week; he was in the studio. But such is the life of a successful Southland freelance musician. (Successful enough that recently he was able to purchase a rare 1740 Michael Platner cello.)

“People talk about going to New York and other big places,” said Landauer, who lives in San Gabriel. “From China, this was my first stop. I think it’s meant for me to be in Southern California. . . . I’ve never thought about moving.”

It’s no wonder that staying put sounds attractive to Landauer. His grandfather, a German scientist, had fled the Nazis because he was Jewish, then fled the Chinese Communists in 1949, a political record that, even after the end of the Cultural Revolution nearly three decades later, hindered the rest of the family’s efforts to emigrate.

They succeeded largely due to Landauer’s musical gifts. In 1980 he entered, and won, the Gregor Piatigorsky cello competition at USC. That sped up his ticket out of China.

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At USC, he earned his master’s degree and served as assistant to cellist Lynn Harrell (the inaugural recipient of the school’s Piatigorsky Chair, which he held for three years). Landauer joined the Pacific Symphony in 1992.

He’s been back to China twice, once in 1987 for a recital and six months ago for a performance with the Shanghai Symphony as part of the International Broadcast Festival, which bestows awards for radio stations and features a week of classical programming. At first, Landauer figured the appearance, and another at the festival’s closing ceremony, was business as usual.

“Then I found out Isaac Stern would be at the closing ceremony,” Landauer said. “He would hear my playing for the first time, of all places, back in China.” Stern was the first artist of stature to visit China after the Cultural Revolution; the 1980 documentary of Stern’s experience there, “From Mao to Mozart,” was one result. Stern also played at the festival.

“He gave a wonderful concert,” Landauer said. “For me it was very emotional. I was a teenager when he was in China the first time,” he said. “We all went to that auditorium for his master class. . . . Now here I was playing, and he was there listening. It was like my exam or something!”

Cellist Timothy Landauer and other principal musicians of the Pacific Symphony play chamber works by Mozart and Schumann tonight and Sunday at Bowers Museum of Cultural Art, 2002 N. Main St., Santa Ana. Dinner at 6:30 p.m., concert at 8. $50 includes dinner at Topaz Cafe. (714) 755-5799. Same program Saturday at Laguna Beach High School Artists’ Theatre, 625 Park Ave., Laguna Beach. $15. 8 p.m. (714) 755-5799.

Landauer is soloist at concerts by the Pacific Symphony Institute on Saturday and Sunday at Cal State Fullerton’s Little Theatre, 800 N. State College Blvd. Edward Cumming leads works by Brahms, Shostakovich and Beethoven. 4 p.m. $5-$10. (714) 773-3371.