Have Baton, Will Travel

The old joke about how to get to Carnegie Hall (practice, practice, practice) omits another crucial piece of advice. Be prepared to travel.

With a layover and a flight delay, for instance, conductor Roberto Minczuk spent 20 hours traveling from South America to Costa Mesa to lead the Pacific Symphony tonight and Thursday at the Orange County Performing Arts Center.

But he’s not complaining. A second-generation Brazilian of Russian descent, Minczuk has always been a jet-lagged citizen of the world.

“I’m accustomed to it,” the 34-year-old conductor said Monday. “I don’t mind traveling. If you take an overnight flight, you lose track of what time it is.”

Minczuk brought along his wife, Valeria, and their three children--Natalie, 9, Rebecca, 7, and Joshua, 4.

“This is [the kids’] summer break,” he said. “It’s winter in America, but it’s summer in Brazil. They will be with me the whole time I’m in the United States.”

Although he’s coming to conduct, Minczuk began his musical career as a French horn prodigy, landing the principal horn position of the Sao Paulo Symphony when he was 16.

He was the fifth of eight children, all of whom studied music. He played trumpet and horn in the Russian Assembly of God church where his father was music minister.

“Even when I was very young, my father used to say, ‘One day you will have to take over and conduct,’” he said. “When I came to America, I was a teenager--14--I was already thinking about conducting.”

But first he had to overcome the popular belief in Brazil that people become conductors only because they can’t play any instrument well. “I had to be a great instrumentalist before I began to be a conductor,” he said.

He won a number of competitions, played at Carnegie Hall at 16, made a solo appearance with the New York Youth Symphony at 17 and graduated from the Juilliard School in New York at 20.

Studying on full scholarship at Juilliard, he also formed and conducted an orchestra at a Ukrainian Assembly of God church where he worshiped. “I was following in my father’s footsteps by also writing music and orchestrating and teaching music for the church,” he said.

After graduation, he joined the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra, led by Kurt Masur in then-East Germany. Minczuk was the only foreigner in the orchestra. He stayed two years.

“Music was the most important thing in Leipzig back then. If you were a member of the orchestra, it was like being a football player in Dallas. A Dallas Cowboy. That’s the respect they had for the musicians. Everywhere you went, you were treated differently.”

But he felt the pull of his native country.

“Being of Russian background, born in Brazil, studying in the United States and living in East Germany, it was an interesting mix,” he said.

“But I felt I should go back home. I had been away for eight years already. Those were very important years, the teenage years when you start developing your ideas about life, politics and who you are.”

He played horn, returned to the church where he met his wife (they just celebrated their 10th anniversary) and composed gospel music. He also studied with Brazilian conductor Eleazar de Carvalho, who was a protege of Serge Koussevitzky and who returned to his homeland after a career in the United States.

“I was very fortunate because right away I was able to have my own orchestra, the University of Brasilia Orchestra,” Minczuk said. “As a conductor, you will only develop when you have an instrument. That was what Brazil was able to give me, which could have been a little more difficult in another place.”

His appointment there quickly led to the post of artistic director of the Orchestra of Ribeirao Preto, which he has held since 1995, and his association since 1997 with the Sao Paulo State Symphony, where he is now also co-artistic director.

He might have remained in Brazil for quite a while except that Masur heard him conduct while he and the orchestra were on a tour. Masur invited him to audition as an assistant conductor for the New York Philharmonic, a job that didn’t require him to live in the city because the post was shared by several people.

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Minczuk was an assistant at the orchestra from 1997 until 2000, making his debut with the orchestra in the Summer Park concert series in 1998.

“Those were very successful concerts,” he said. “I was able to get good reviews and I was approached by several managers, and they started representing me in the United States and in Europe, and this is how I got going.”

After Costa Mesa, he’ll be conducting in Denver, Indianapolis, Seattle, Fort Worth, Detroit and other U.S. cities as well as returning to launch the Sao Paulo season in March.

His Pacific Symphony program will include the Polovtsian Dances from Borodin’s “Prince Igor,” Prokofiev’s Third Piano Concerto (with soloist Lilya Zilberstein) and Rimsky-Korsakov’s “Scheherazade.”

“I love this combination of pieces,” he said. “I can’t deny my background and my attachment to this music. This repertoire is very traditional, but it fits well together. And we--the musicians and the audience--can never tire of this great music.”

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Roberto Minczuk will lead the Pacific Symphony in music by Borodin, Prokofiev and Rimsky-Korsakov tonight and Thursday at 8 p.m. at the Orange County Performing Arts Center, 600 Town Center Drive, Costa Mesa. Lilya Zilberstein solos in Prokofiev’s Third Piano Concerto. $21 to $56. (714) 556-2787.