Reaching Out With Mozart : Music: Orchestra director, also a CSUF prof, says group’s repertory speaks to everyone--regardless of class or culture.

BURBANK — The Los Angeles Philharmonic is not the only local orchestra beginning the new season with a new music director. After auditioning three potential leaders last season, the Los Angeles Mozart Orchestra settled on pianist-conductor Lucinda Carver, 36, for the post.

Carver, a native of Los Alamitos, began learning piano at age 6. Her studies have taken her around the world, from UC Santa Barbara to the Manhattan School of Music in New York, from private study with Murray Perahia in London to the Mozarteum in Salzburg, Austria. She teaches piano at Cal State Fullerton.

These are tough times for artistic transitions, a process complicated in this case by the fact that the Los Angeles Mozart Orchestra has had only one music director since its debut in 1976: founder David Keith, who retired last year. Despite a vicissitudinous history of mixed reviews and financial crises, Keith kept the ensemble alive for 15 years. Transforming such personal tenacity and vision into an organization that will survive the loss of its father figure is seldom easy.

The new music director, however, is optimistic about both the orchestra’s current estate and its future. Carver recently discussed the prospects, at her home in Burbank.

The new season opens Dec. 5 at the Wilshire-Ebell Theatre. The program: the “I Traci amanti” Overture (Cimarosa); Violin Concerto No. 5 (Mozart), with soloist Yukiko Kamei; the “Holberg” Suite (Grieg), and Symphony No. 63 (Haydn).

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Question: What do you see as the mission of the orchestra?

Answer: One of the things I find most important is the cultivation of an audience for the future, in classical music in general, but especially here in Los Angeles. I also work as a professor at a university, and one of my favorite things is to teach music appreciation. I’m really appalled at the lack of music in the schools, and it’s getting worse.

I think the mission of any classical group now is to build an audience and bring people in, to dispel the myth that classical music is only for--oh, I don’t know--older people, or a wealthy, elite sector of society. Mozart’s music speaks to everyone, and I think that the Mozart Orchestra is perfectly set up to fulfill that mission in that we do concentrate on that repertory.

Also, I think it’s important to add a sense of diversity to the music scene in Los Angeles. I think any city that can have a large number of groups flourishing--or at least a respectable number--attests to the quality of the cultural scene.

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Q: What are your feelings about the universality of music? Is a specific cultural context necessary for its appreciation?

A: No, I don’t think so. Certainly Mozart’s music appeals across the board. It’s hard to put your finger on what it is about Mozart’s music that makes it so accessible, but I’ve found that, especially working with college kids with no background in classical music, Mozart just really strikes a nerve.

At the same time, there are composers who represent different cultural backgrounds in the 18th Century, I mean like Chevalier de Saint-Georges (the son of a French plantation owner and an Afro-Caribbean woman). He was a very well-respected composer of his time; Mozart thought highly of his work.

My main concern is, regardless of what music we play in bringing in culturally diverse backgrounds, it has to be of high quality. . . . I sometimes get disturbed when I hear music being played just because you are trying to appease one group or another.

Instead of trying, perhaps, to address different groups by bringing in music of their nationality or cultural background, we’re doing a great service to everyone by trying to expose them to the glories of this wonderful music.

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Q: It’s hard to put yourself outside of your own background, but would you feel the same way about hearing the music of one of the other communities represented here?

A: I would certainly hope that I could listen to it and be understanding and open-minded, yet I don’t know if I would necessarily have the listening skills to appreciate it.

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Q: But you don’t feel such skills are needed for Mozart?

A: That’s a good point. I don’t know. My feeling, though, is that we need to break down the stereotype that Mozart is cute and pretty and it’s for a certain segment of society. I really do feel that, especially, Mozart’s music transcends barriers. It’s true, I am coming from a European background, so I can’t speak for everyone.

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Q: What are the orchestra’s outreach and educational programs like?

A: I want to make these concerts accessible to everybody. One of my big projects now is launching the L.A. Mozart Orchestra Chamber Players, which would be sort of a repertory group of chamber ensembles selected from members of the orchestra.

I’m hoping to arrange some programs whereby we can go out into schools and do some concerts. The Chamber Players, obviously, would be a way to do it in an affordable manner--we just don’t have the budget to bring the whole orchestra--to play music that these kids can hear on a one-on-one basis, a few feet away from the players, not in some gigantic concert hall.

At the same time, we have some programs set up that underwrite student subscriptions, which are given gratis to various groups, for instance, recent scholarship winners of the Black Experience Expressed Through Music Foundation.

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Q: The works you have chosen for your first season seem squarely within the ensemble’s repertory history. Do you plan any changes or expansion there, or see any programming areas that need addressing?

A: I’m expanding very subtly. I felt that for a long time the orchestra had been on the brink of falling into the danger of playing Mozart and Haydn, Haydn and Mozart, a little more Mozart and some more Haydn. So I wanted to explore some more unusual repertory within the classical era, and at the same time add in some more baroque music. I’m actually sticking one toe into the 19th Century with the Grieg “Holberg” Suite.

I would also like occasionally to do some 20th-Century repertory that fits into the classical idiom. One area that I love very much is the early 20th-Century British repertory, the English school. There are a lot of pieces there that are classically conceived that I think would work very well with our programming.

I basically want to keep the focus of the orchestra the same. As far as I’m concerned, you can’t get enough of Mozart!

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Q: Where do you fit into the various camps of performance practice?

A: Personally, I have learned a tremendous amount from the period instrument movement. In my own experience as a pianist, one of the most valuable things I ever learned was when I had the chance to play Mozart’s and Haydn’s pianos. I just suddenly had a whole new idea about how to approach it on the grand piano.

I would like to continue the trend toward authenticity on modern instruments. In other words, a genuine regard for style, for performance practice in terms of bowing, to try to get more of a sense of transparency, which you naturally get with period instruments.

I think you can achieve a happy balance. . . . You can really make wonderful music on modern instruments, employing all the knowledge and scholarship that has come out.

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Q: Well, why use modern instruments?

A: For me, I really like the baroque music on period instruments. But I actually like the brightness of modern instruments in Mozart. Also, we have evidence of Mozart complaining about certain instruments during his time. He knew full well, for example, that the fortepiano was in a period of transition, just starting out. . . . Sometimes I think, “Why go back and play that music on an instrument that the composer complained about?”

The main danger that we’re faced with now is tunnel vision, that you can only play this music on period instruments. There’s been a swing toward that sort of severe stance, which I think is just as close-minded as that of the people who didn’t like the period instruments in the first place!

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Q: You played with the orchestra in the past as a keyboardist. What brought you into conducting?

A: I first became interested in conducting about 15 years ago. I was living in London and studying extensively with (pianist) Murray Perahia. He approaches music from the standpoint of someone who would be going about composing it or conducting it. . . . It opens up a whole new world of color and timbre and balance.

The sense of imagination provided to me by this mental orchestration of a piano piece, in combination with the sense of wonder when you really begin to look at what these composers have done, got me interested in the idea of conducting in a rather abstract way.

Then a few years later--after some study in New York, where I was primarily still doing piano--I went to Austria. I was on a Fulbright fellowship for three years at the Mozarteum, and that’s where I was really bitten by the proverbial bug.

I began doing some conducting over in Austria, and I was thinking of staying. But I was given some sage advice by one of my professors that if I really wanted to do what I wanted to do, as a woman, Europe might not be the place.

So I came back to Los Angeles, primarily because I was given a very generous scholarship to do my doctorate at USC. The main reason I chose USC was because they had both a fabulous piano teacher in John Perry and a wonderful conducting program. I studied extensively there with Hans Beer and William Schaefer.

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Q: What brought you to the LAMO music director job?

A: In terms of the Mozart Orchestra, I’ve always had my heart in chamber orchestra repertory. It’s more intimate, it’s the repertory I love, and after all that time in Salzburg I had really become immersed in Mozart. That had become my focus, and so this was the best of all possible worlds.

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Q: How has the transition gone?

A: So far it’s been smooth. I’ve been associated with the orchestra since about 1987. I worked with David Keith before as a piano soloist, and I got to know the board members during that time, and that helped a bit. I think the transition has been as smooth as could be expected. Certainly, with the players, any transition can be difficult, because they get used to a certain type of conducting, a certain personality. . . . I’m not planning to have any major changes with the orchestra--I’m happy with the players; I think we have really fine people.

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Q: We have heard about the impending demise of this orchestra at times in the past. What is its current estate?

A: It was a little frightening, I thought, last season. We were turned down for some grants just because there was not yet a music director. Now that someone is in place and things are moving forward, I think that’s turning around. As of the last board meeting, our subscriptions were up 35% over last year, and we haven’t sent out our subscription brochure yet, so that’s certainly good news.

The orchestra is in the black. Yes, we do have (just) a three-concert season, which we would like to expand, but we’re moving ahead cautiously.

Always, the main thing in mind is to keep up the quality, even if it is only three concerts, and do the very best we can artistically and aesthetically.