Hearing His Calling

If not for the timely arrival of a key musical mentor almost 40 years ago, Raymond Kobler probably wouldn’t be on stage tonight as the Pacific Symphony’s new concertmaster.

Though he started violin lessons at 7, Kobler, like many others his age, lost interest for a while in his teens and gave up the instrument.

“I was more interested in playing sports and stuff,” Kobler, 54, said by phone this week from his home in San Francisco.

But after his family moved from New York to Orange, N.J., he met Samuel Applebaum, “a fantastic teacher” at his new high school. He credits Applebaum, the father of Guarneri String Quartet violist Michael Tree, for rekindling his interest in the violin.

“He gave me all these pieces by Wieniaski, Bruch and Tchaikovsky which I had had no idea about,” Kobler said. “I ate it up. They were really eye-opening. I dreamed of being able to play them.”

He then went to Indiana University to study with famed artist and pedagogue Josef Gingold, a former student of Eugene Ysaye and later concertmaster of the Cleveland Orchestra during the George Szell years.

Kobler held the post of associate concertmaster in that vaunted group from 1974-80, then became concertmaster of the San Francisco Symphony from 1980-98, during which he was featured as a soloist more than 70 times.

He has been playing with the Pacific Symphony since February and was appointed concertmaster in May. Tonight’s concert will be his first appearance at the orchestra’s series of summer concerts at Irvine Meadows Amphitheatre because he’s had other professional commitments.

He’ll have an extended solo in the pas de deux from “Swan Lake” as part of the orchestra’s traditional summer season finale--a Tchaikovsky program with cannons and fireworks.

“It’s a joy and a privilege to play orchestral solos,” Kobler said.

Because he came on board too late for the orchestra to schedule any major vehicle for him in this coming season--which opens Oct. 1 at the Performing Arts Center with Mahler’s Eighth Symphony--Kobler will make his concerto debut on Feb. 7, 2001, playing the Korngold Concerto.

“It’s one of the most incredibly difficult pieces, but it’s filled with incredible invention,” he said.

Kobler was born in San Francisco and grew up there, in New York and New Jersey. His father, who died in May, was an engineer born in Austria.

A Jew, Kobler’s father, Richard, had been in danger of the Nazi pogroms. His savior was American film star Gloria Swanson, who had met him in Vienna, when she was founding a plastics firm in New York.

“She writes about it in her autobiography [“Swanson on Swanson,” Random House, 1980]. She talks about dad very lovingly,” he said. “She was able to smuggle Dad out.” That was in 1938.

Kobler was inspired to take up the violin after hearing a young neighbor play. “I went back home and asked my mother, ‘Can I study that?’ ”

He and his older brother, Arthur, started taking music lessons. “He got all the A’s in music,” Kobler said. “I got all the Fs. He became a diplomat. I became a musician. He was the deputy ambassador to Hong Kong for many years.”

A younger sister, Linda, became a harpsichordist and later taught music history at the Juilliard School in New York. She now lives in Erie, Pa., with her husband, composer Albert Glinsky.

After graduating from Indiana University, he spent four years playing in the United States Marine Corps White House String Quartet, then took top posts in the National Ballet Orchestra and Baltimore Symphony before moving to Cleveland in 1974.

He met his wife, San Francisco Symphony violinist Catherine Van Hoesen, while concertmaster there. They have been together for about 19 years, have no children and are looking for a house in Orange County. Kobler’s contract with the Pacific is for two years.

Kobler is the seventh concertmaster in the Pacific’s 20-year history. He fills a vacancy left by Kevin Connolly, who resigned for personal reasons after one season in October, 1998. The others, in chronological order, were Madeleine Schatz, John Sambuco, Israel Baker, Endre Granat and Sheryl Staples.

The Pacific has been led since 1990 by Carl St.Clair, only the second music director of the orchestra since it had been founded in 1979 by Keith Clark, who left in 1989.

Kobler’s duties as Pacific concertmaster will be to serve as principal violinist and to provide leadership to the first violin section.

“The best thing a person in a leadership position can do is to help everybody play to the best of their ability,” he said.

Regarding his departure from the San Francisco Symphony, Kobler would only say, “It was time to move on. I’m looking forward to being [in the Pacific].

“It’s a wonderful orchestra, and it has wonderful musicians in it. Carl has done a wonderful job. He’s a talented conductor. I hope we’ll be able to reach new heights together.”

* The Pacific Symphony, led by guest conductor Barry Jekowsky, will play a Tchaikovsky program tonight at 8 p.m. at Irvine Meadows Amphitheatre, 8808 Irvine Center Drive. $14 to $57. (714) 755-5799.