New Name, New Season : Opening With a Mendelssohn Birthday Program, the Newport Beach Recital Series Becomes the Pacific Virtuosi

The fledgling but critically well-regarded Newport Beach Recital Series kicks off its season Thursday in Irvine with a program celebrating the music of Felix Mendelssohn--and a new name, the Pacific Virtuosi.

The idea, founding artistic director Leonid Levitsky said, is to gain wider recognition for the chamber music group. And, hopefully, a bigger audience.

“Many advisors told me that the Newport Beach Recital Series name sounded too local,” said Levitsky, a pianist who lives in Aliso Viejo. “When we were trying to get funding or scheduling concerts, we were told, ‘You’re Newport Beach, go there.’

“People look at things very formally. That was the reason for the name change,” he said.

Let’s hope it helps. The group plans to offer further concerts at the Irvine Barclay Theatre in December, March and June, all on a tiny budget of about $40,000, most of which comes from individuals.

“We’re trying to survive,” Levitsky said. “It’s still a struggle, as it is with classical music all over the world, unfortunately.”

The group also will play on various occasions at the Bing Theater at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, as part of the “Sunday at 4” program broadcast by KUSC-FM.

“We’ve played there many times,” Levitsky said. “We played there in November 1994, even before we played at the Barclay. I try to schedule the two [series] together.”

A graduate of the Moscow Conservatory, Levitsky moved to Orange County in 1993 with his wife, Catherine Matovich, who grew up here.

The couple began to see concert work opportunities for Russian musicians who were financially strapped by the recent breakup of the Soviet Union. That effort has been touch-and-go, and though the concerts have received favorable reviews, wider success eludes them.

Levitsky hit on the idea of celebrating composers’ birthdays as a programming device about two years ago, when he presented a 200th Schubert birthday program at the Irvine theater.

“I didn’t feel it was very common to do that [type of program] in the United States, but it’s very common in Europe,” he said. “It was a good concert. That’s why I decided to do it again, just to dedicate a special evening for this composer, remembering and appreciating him.”

This time out, Levitsky chose Mendelssohn, who was born 190 years ago. The program will feature the composer’s Violin Sonata in F minor, Second Cello Sonata and Piano Trio in D minor.

*

Assisting Levitsky will be violinist Alexander Brussilovsky, who has played with the group for two years, and cellist Boris Andrianov, a 22-year-old student at the Moscow Conservatory who won the Bronze medal at the 1998 Tchaikovsky International Competition.

“He is a great cellist,” Levitsky said, “even at 22.”

The three works span about 18 years of Mendelssohn’s rather short life. He died at 36.

He was 14 when he wrote the Violin Sonata in F minor, which is rarely heard today. That marked the beginning of his astonishing adolescence, during which he produced the evergreen Overture to “A Midsummer Night’s Dream,” among other works.

“Mendelssohn was a great master of modulations,” Levitsky said. “You can hear that even in his early works. It’s very beautiful how he plays with harmonies and melodies. Of course, like in many other of his pieces, the slow movement is very beautiful.”

*

The Cello Sonata, composed in 1845, is “already a mature work,” Levitsky said. “It’s very virtuosic.”

The Trio in D Minor, the first of two Trios that Mendelssohn wrote, dates from 1840.

“To tell you the truth, I was inspired when I heard the tape of [Jascha] Heifetz, [Gregor] Piatigorsky and [Artur] Rubinstein playing it,” Levitsky said. “For years, I kept this idea of playing it inside me. Now I feel this is the time to do it.”

Looking ahead, Levitsky sees 2000 being “full of celebrations. It’s the 160th anniversary of the birth of Tchaikovsky, the 230th of Beethoven and the 190th of both Chopin and Schumann. All in the same year.”

It should be a big party.

* Leonid Levitsky’s Pacific Virtuosi will play three chamber music pieces by Mendelssohn in honor of the composer’s 190th birthday on Thursday at 8 p.m. at the Irvine Barclay Theatre, 4242 Campus Drive. $16-$30. (Students and seniors: $10.) (949) 854-4646.