Director Pursues a Harmonious Mix

Every summer, Burton Karson gives himself headaches. Which he loves.

Each year, the founder and artistic director of the annual Baroque Music Festival Corona del Mar comes up with eclectic programs, then goes crazy trying to find the music for them.

“If I were constantly doing Bach’s Magnificat,” Karson, 64, said recently over lunch at a Costa Mesa restaurant, “I’d have no problem. But I do dozens and dozens of pieces every year.

“Sometimes we do unusual things, seldom-heard or maybe never-heard pieces that I’ve found in my research in London, Darmstadt [Germany] and Prague [Czech Republic],” he said. “They are short pieces, so you have to do lots.”

This year’s 19th festival, which opens Sunday, will present nearly 30 works--including Bach’s rarely played Cantata No. 10 (June 27 at St. Michael & All Angels Church), and humorous pieces by P.D.Q. Bach (Peter Schickele) (Wednesday at Sherman Library & Gardens).

Although Karson found it “very difficult” to buy music for the Bach cantata, nothing was as hard as finding the score of Handel’s Italian cantata “Cuopre tal voltra il cielo” (Sometimes the sky is covered by an unexpected dark cloud). The work, for baritone voice and strings, also will be on the Wednesday program at the Gardens.

Although it was listed in the catalog of Handel’s complete works, Karson’s usual music vendor was unable to find it.

So Karson, who the rest of the year teaches music at Cal State Fullerton, set off on a long, initially fruitless search through the Los Angeles Public Library and the libraries at USC and UCLA.

“Nobody had it,” he said. “I went mad for weeks trying to find this thing. It took unbelievable effort, frustration, telephone calls and faxes.

Then a research librarian at UCLA unraveled the mystery: The work had been published, as claimed, but in German, not Italian, although the original Italian text was provided as an addition. (The festival singers will sing it in Italian.)

“How would I know that?” Karson asked.

All that for what will be 10 minutes of music. And worth every minute of the effort.

“It’s a very dramatic piece about thunder and lightning and love,” Karson said. “It’s a parallelism to the agony caused by love, which naturally causes all kinds of pain. It’s a typical baroque fascination with storms and emotions.”

Turning to the other end of the scale, Karson hopes he’s not taking too big of a risk in programming three pieces by the fictional P.D.Q. Bach.

“It’s very difficult to present serious listeners with humor because sometimes they’re a little incensed,” he said. “They don’t like to make fun of their favorite kinds of music.

“Everyone knows I have a sense of humor and like to make puns, and so on, but I’ve never been zany enough to do the kind of comic relief in a concert like the Hoffnung series in London, or Anna Russell, and, of course, the great Dane [Victor Borge], who still performs at advanced age. I think it’s laughter that keeps him going.”

The three P.D.Q. works include:

* “Sonata for Viola Four Hands and Harpsichord,” or “Two people playing one viola,” Karson said.

* “Suite No. 1 for Cello All by Its Lonesome”: “It has very silly titles which immediately tell the audience that it ought to be funny. But some of it sounds rather straight. So the humor is against a backdrop of normalcy.”

* “Iphigenia in Brooklyn”: “Gluck wrote two operas, ‘Iphigenie en Turide’ and ‘Iphigenie en Aulide’ for Paris. This is ‘Iphigenia in Brooklyn.’ It takes place in marketplace.”

The humor comes in the second half of the program. “The first half is serious music, but light,” Karson said.

Another festival highlight includes Albinoni’s Magnificat, part of the June 27 series finale program. “It’s a wonderful, short, but absolutely marvelous, piece that alternates solos and chorus without stopping, without sectionalizing it too much.

“Albinoni is a very good composer,” Karson said. “He made a very big impact on Johann Sebastian, who borrowed some of his tunes. Every time I do Albinoni, people think it’s gorgeous.”

Karson also has been given permission from Piatigorsky’s widow to again play the famous cellist’s arrangement for cello and violin of Stravinsky’s “Suite Italianne” (a.k.a. “Pulcinella”). (Piatigorsky originally arranged it for him and Heifetz.) The presence of the Stravinsky work is one way Karson tries each year to show the influence Baroque music has had on succeeding generations.

“It’s very much protected, and we’re the only ones who have been given permission to do this,” he said. “Once was six years ago, and now this is the second time.

“It’s a fascinating piece, and if anyone wants to hear it, this is the only place to hear it.” It’ll be played June 25 by violinist Clayton Haslop and cellist Timothy Landauer.

Karson put the festival together on a budget of about $40,000. Of that, about 35% comes from ticket sales. “The rest comes from very generous gifts,” said Karson, who gets no salary.

“If anyone wanted me to do this someplace else, I’d say, ‘Sure, for $50,000, I’ll do it.’ It takes an enormous amount of time and worry and creative thinking and details that I wish we had a staff to do,” he said. “But we have a volunteer board, and they’re marvelous. . . .

“And people are so grateful. It’s gratifying to give people something that they feel they can’t get in this shape anywhere else . . . not in the intimate settings that we operate in, and not with the same kind of programming.”

* The 19th annual Baroque Music Festival Corona del Mar opens Sunday at St. Michael & All Angels Church, 3233 Pacific View Drive, Corona del Mar. 4 p.m. The festival continues at 8 p.m. Monday at the church; at 8 p.m. June 23 and 25 at Sherman Library & Gardens, 2645 E. Coast Highway; and closes with a 4 p.m. concert June 27 at the church. Concerts at the gardens, $30; Sundays at the church, $25. The Monday organ recital at the church is $10. (949) 760-7887.