Violinist Gil Shaham Knows Switch Way the Wind Blows

Violinist Gil Shaham returned a phone call last week about midnight in France, where he’d just finished playing a recital in Bordeaux. No big deal, except that he hadn’t gone there to play a recital.

“The whole country is on strike, all government employees, all transportation workers,” said Shaham, who appears Friday in Costa Mesa and Tuesday in Los Angeles as soloist with the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra.

The day before he was to begin a pair of concerts as soloist with Orchestre Nationale Bordeaux Aquitaine, Shaham learned that, although the first event would go ahead as planned (he played Bruch’s “Scottish Fantasy”), the second would not, because of the strike.

“Members of the [Bordelais] orchestra are considered government employees,” he said.

Shaham decided to perform anyway.

“I met a pianist here two days ago,” he said. “We hit it off.” He and Francoise Larrat assayed sonatas by Mozart and Brahms in place of the concert with the orchestra.

Shaham, 25, takes such last-minute switches in stride; in 1989, with Michael Tilson Thomas leading the London Symphony, he made two appearances as substitute on a day’s notice for an ailing Itzhak Perlman.

“It’s just a little part of the business,” Shaham said.

Shaham began a two-week tour with the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra in Ogden, Utah, on Monday. The tour takes the musicians to Las Vegas, several California cities, including San Francisco and Los Angeles (at USC’s Bovard Auditorium), and Chicago.

At the Orange County Performing Arts Center, Shaham plays Vivaldi’s “The Four Seasons.” St. Paul music director Hugh Wolff also conducts “Too Hot Toccata” by Aaron Jay Kernis (the ensemble’s composer-in-residence since 1993) and Beethoven’s Symphony No. 4 in B-flat.

This season Shaham is also scheduled for return engagements with the New York Philharmonic and the Philadelphia Orchestra (at Carnegie Hall) and a recital tour with his sister, pianist Orli Shaham. Appearances abroad include concerts with the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra of Amsterdam, the Russian National Orchestra and, as part of its 60th-anniversary celebrations, the Israel Philharmonic.

Shaham records exclusively for Deutsche Grammophon. Recent recordings include a “Paganini for Two” collaboration with guitarist Goran Sollscher, a Grammy-nominated pairing of the Barber and Korngold concertos with Andre Previn leading the London Symphony, and a bestselling “Four Seasons” with the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra.

In the vast pantheon of “Four Seasons” recordings and performances, what might distinguish Shaham’s interpretation from others?

With the West Coast tour in mind, he said, “I’m thinking of a California joke. . . . It’s summer, summer, summer and summer.”

But seriously . . .

“This is the very first concerto I ever played. I was 10 years old,” said Shaham, who was born in Illinois, moved with his family to Israel when he was 2 and has lived in New York City since 1982. “I have a tape of me playing it--it was atrocious. Then I didn’t play it for years, because it is ‘The Four Seasons’--because you hear it on car commercials on TV, on elevators in department stores, in Alan Alda movies. . . . For a while I didn’t go near it.

“Then I started to study Vivaldi a little more I met some people who really had the Vivaldi bug. Vivaldi mania! I realized there is something really incredible about the man and his music--and ‘The Four Seasons’ stands out as the four most special concertos that he wrote. So much character!”

Basic approach became a big issue in rehearsals with the Orpheus ensemble. Initially, style was paramount; the musicians tried using Baroque bows. But the consensus was that spirit was more important than style.

“[Where] Vivaldi writes on the score, ‘Tremendous thunder ripples through the night,’ we’d make it scary enough to make the cat run under the bed,” Shaham said. “Especially the last few years, when people concentrated so much on style, we’ve lost a little of the adventure of this music. It’s such a wild trip to go through, ‘The Four Seasons’ . . . .”

Shaham plays the “Countess Polignac” Stradivarius, which once belonged to the reputed French mistress of Benjamin Franklin while he was America’s first ambassador to France.

Shaham was asked what other information he had about the late-17th-century instrument.

“It’s 1699 . . . plus tax,” he said with a chuckle.

* Violinist Gil Shaham is soloist when Hugh Wolff leads the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra in Vivaldi’s “The Four Seasons” on Friday at the Orange County Performing Arts Center, 600 Town Center Drive, Costa Mesa. The Philharmonic Society of Orange County program also includes works by Beethoven and Aaron Jay Kernis. 8 p.m. $10-$48. (714) 553-2422.