Cardenes Finds Happiness With Pittsburgh Symphony

When former San Diego Symphony concertmaster Andres Cardenes left town in the darkest days of the orchestra’s canceled 1986-87 season, he did not completely sever his local ties. Each year Cardenes, who is now concertmaster for the Pittsburgh Symphony, has returned to perform in various chamber music series. On March 6 and 8, he will play a pair of recitals with pianist Karen Follingstad, featuring the solo violin works of Brahms and Schubert, at La Jolla’s St. James Episcopal Church.

After he left San Diego, Cardenes joined the University of Michigan music faculty with the intention of avoiding the politics and instability of orchestra playing. It took Pittsburgh two years to woo him away from the academic confines of Ann Arbor.

The Cuban-born violinist admitted that as his first year as Pittsburgh’s concertmaster draws to a close, his trepidation about returning to play in an orchestra has been proven unfounded.

“It has turned out much better than I thought it would. So far, I’ve been wrong about my reservations--the usual orchestra mentality, problems of commitment, and union troubles. Here there’s a good give and take with management that keeps things a lot calmer.”

In addition to his solo performing and teaching violin students at Pittsburgh’s Carnegie-Mellon University, Cardenes has been busy cultivating new violin repertory.

“I’ve commissioned a new violin concerto by Riccardo Lorenz, which I’ll premiere with the San Antonio Symphony on Oct. 4, 1990. Lorenz is a young Venezuelan composer who directs the Latin American Music Center at Indiana University. We were college classmates.

“A year ago, I had asked him to compose a violin and harp piece, which I played last August at the Skaneateles (New York) chamber music festival. I enjoyed working with him, so I put him to work on a concerto.”

When apprised of the San Diego Symphony’s recent return to solvency and apparent stability, he expressed pleasant surprise.

“I’m glad it’s back on its feet. I’m sure Wes Brustad and others worked hard, and I hope this time they’ll stay afloat.”

Does he regret leaving San Diego?

“I can only say this. In retrospect it was a good decision, however painful. At the time, there was not much of a choice. Anybody who knows me knows that I’m a doer. I don’t like to sit around and wait.”

Replacement diva. The San Diego Opera has announced that American soprano Johanna Meier will replace Sabine Hass in the company’s Richard Wagner concert March 20 at Civic Theatre.

The German soprano has been advised by her physicians not to travel, so she canceled her spring American engagements, including her appearance with New Orleans Opera as Senta in “The Flying Dutchman,” her debut role with San Diego Opera two seasons ago.

Meier, whose Wagnerian credentials include being the first American to sing Isolde at Germany’s Bayreuth Festival in 1981, performed in a number of San Diego Opera productions during the 1970s. Her Marschallin in San Diego’s 1976 “Der Rosenkavalier” was a memorable performance. She has not sung for the local company, however, since her Met debut in 1979.

Although Hass will not sing in the Wagner concert, her husband, bass Artur Korn, will perform as scheduled. His local debut in last season’s “Fidelio” was the most universally praised aspect of that controversial production.

American tenor Gary Lakes, whom many consider to be the newest great white hope of Wagnerian heldentenors, will complete the trio of singers on the concert. This all-Wagner program, conducted by Heinz Fricke, music director of East Germany’s Berlin State Opera, will include a concert version of the entire first act of “Die Walkure.”

Musical Mecca. More than 400 string players made inquiry into the San Diego Symphony’s auditions for two first-chair positions and five section vacancies. Music director designate Yoav Talmi is in town this week to sit in on these auditions, which started Sunday and will end Wednesday, for which the symphony chose 150 candidates.

Talmi and the audition committee will hear more than 40 candidates for the single section viola vacancy, but only 14 cellists are trying out for the principal cello chair left open when former first-chair cellist Eric Kim took a similar position with the Cincinnati Symphony.

According to symphony executives, they received inquiries from musicians in all 50 states and from 14 foreign countries.

Opening tonight. Rustavi, the much touted 50-member singing and dancing troupe from Soviet Georgia, opens a week run at Symphony Hall tonight at 8 o’clock. . . . At UC San Diego’s Mandeville Auditorium, the Tokyo International Music Ensemble “New Tradition” will present a single concert of contemporary music employing traditional Japanese gagaku instruments. Among the composers represented on this program, which also begins at 8 p.m., are John Cage, Toru Takemitsu, and UCSD faculty member Joji Yuasa.