Timothy Landauer Is a Man in Motion

Cellist Timothy Landauer, among the busiest classical musicians in Southern California, is even busier than usual these days. But his preparations for an upcoming flurry of engagements, including a pair of concerts as soloist with the Pacific Symphony, came screeching to a brief halt last week.

“I got a speeding ticket,” Landauer, 33, confessed. “Actually I was stopped for two reasons, following too closely and speeding.”

Why the hurry?

“I wanted to get home to practice.”

Speeding home to practice is one thing, but one can rarely follow a score too closely; the San Gabriel resident is paying close attention to Elgar’s Cello Concerto, which he plays Wednesday and Thursday at the Orange County Performing Arts Center in Costa Mesa. Pacific Symphony music director Carl St.Clair will also lead the orchestra in Vaughan Williams’ “Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis” and Tchaikovsky’s Symphony No. 4.

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Landauer, a Pacific Symphony member for almost five years and its principal cellist, offered several reasons for choosing the Elgar for his concerto debut with the group.

“Jacqueline Du Pre passed away in 1987, so this is the 10-year anniversary,” he explained. “Besides the ‘Enigma’ Variations and the ‘Pomp and Circumstance’ March, the concerto comes to people’s minds as a cornerstone work of Elgar. Pablo Casals was first to perform it, but Du Pre by far was the one who brought it to people’s attention and who put a personal interpretive stamp that correctly casts the light of this piece.

“Though the concerto was not performed until 1919, I believe that Elgar conceived it in 1917, and that makes 80 years,” Landauer continued. “I’m really into this numbers stuff. Maybe because I’m Chinese. Numbers are a big deal in my life.”

Du Pre performed the work several times in the 1960s and became closely identified with it before illness abruptly halted her career in 1972. Landauer treasures a video produced to commemorate Du Pre’s playing of the Elgar. But when he performs, he emulates her, rather than imitates.

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“I get as much inspiration from her playing as I can, then I leave it, let it mature within myself, and hopefully offer my own original thoughts,” he said. “Performers have their own way of doing certain things, of evoking certain images, yet can still be trying to convey the same message.”

The Shanghai-born Landauer earned his master’s degree from USC and served for three years there as assistant to cellist Lynn Harrell, who was the inaugural recipient of the school’s Piatigorsky Chair. Landauer has appeared as soloist with orchestras including the Russian Philharmonic Orchestra, the Beijing Symphony and the Hong Kong Philharmonic, and will again be a soloist this summer at Wyoming’s Grand Teton Music Festival (and will again go white-water rafting on the nearby Snake River).

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His impending orchestral engagements and a ferociously busy studio schedule aside, a round of chamber engagements would alone explain Landauer’s rush home to practice.

He played a pair of Pacific Symphony-sponsored chamber concerts this past weekend; on this Sunday, the Los Angeles Piano Trio, of which he’s a member, appears at Caltech in Pasadena. He plays a recital at UC Santa Barbara on March 6, at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art with the Los Angeles Piano Trio on March 9 (for KUSC’s “Sundays at 4” series) and another chamber concert at Cal State Fullerton on March 11.

Landauer, who lives on a street called Alegro, vows not to speed through his Costa Mesa concerts.

“I’m taking my time in the Elgar,” he said.

* Timothy Landauer is soloist with the Pacific Symphony on Wednesday and Thursday at Orange County Performing Arts Center, 600 Town Center Drive, Costa Mesa. Landauer plays Elgar’s Cello Concerto; music director Carl St.Clair also leads works by Vaughan Williams and Tchaikovsky. 8 p.m. $16-$44. (714) 755-5799.