USC Scores Coup, Beating Philharmonic : Music: Daniel Lewis and student musicians will give Corigliano’s First Symphony its L.A. premiere Wednesday.

The little David of the USC Symphony has beaten the mighty Goliath of the Los Angeles Philharmonic to the punch by giving the Los Angeles premiere of John Corigliano’s First Symphony, an angry and poignant ode to friends the composer has lost to AIDS.

Daniel Lewis will conduct the work on Wednesday at the school’s Bovard Auditorium. David Zinman will lead the Philharmonic in the piece in January at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion. Both orchestras actually are Johnnies-come-lately; the San Francisco Symphony gave the West Coast premiere in December, 1991, and the Pacific Symphony played it several days later in Costa Mesa.

Still, “it’s important we’re doing it,” says USC Symphony conductor Lewis. “I want to focus on this dreadful plague. People must be aware that this is something which this country--this government--must put money in to help lick. . . . It’s very important for everybody to keep that foremost in mind.”

As for playing the work before the Philharmonic, Lewis says, that was basically an accident of programming. “But I don’t feel any qualms at all,” he says. “The Philharmonic has had two years to do this piece. We just happened to get there first.”

“USC is only to be praised,” says Philharmonic artistic administrator Ara Guzelimian. “We’re not especially interested in racing anyone for it. If a piece is worth doing, it’s worth doing. That’s the issue.”

Corigliano spent two years writing the work. When asked how many people he’s known who have been afflicted by the disease, he replied: “I stopped counting at 100.”

The Symphony won the 1991 Louisville Grawemeyer Award for Music Composition (a $150,000 prize) and was a serious contender for the 1991 Pulitzer Prize in Music (which went to Shulamit Ran’s Symphony). A recording by conductor Daniel Barenboim and the Chicago Symphony, which commissioned the work, won a 1991 Grammy Award.

“I don’t know what the lasting power of this piece will be,” Lewis cautions. “I know Corigliano does not it want it to be known as the ‘AIDS Symphony.’ He wants the music to stand on its own. But some New York critics have felt that the piece isn’t strong enough to stand on its own.”

On the other hand, Lisa Sylvester, who plays the prominent piano solo in the symphony, considers it “a very powerful piece” that “rises to incredible climaxes.”

How does she handle it? “Musicians have to have dual personalities,” she says. “You want to express emotional feelings because you want the audience to have an emotional reaction to what you do. So you have to create that in yourself. But you can’t let it completely overtake you. You can’t emotionally check out. That’s one of the challenges of being a musician.”

Sylvester says that a former teacher “who was quite close to me” died of AIDS. Other students say they’ve had no personal association with the disease but are affected by the work anyway.

For Amy Sims, principal second violinist, “some parts (of the Symphony) are a little too gripping to ignore. It’s a reminder to me of just how well music can convey such intense emotions of rage, frustration, hopelessness and genuinely deep bitter sorrow.”

Timpanist Anthony Bott says, “Nobody has done anything like this before. I really think that’s important. . . . The music just adds to the issue and how much it’s really impacting everyone’s life. You can’t avoid it, that’s for sure.”

However, not everybody at USC appreciates the work. Lewis says one conducting student feels the piece is “too obvious” and if it weren’t connected to an AIDS subject, wouldn’t receive all this attention.

To make the work more manageable for less than top-class orchestras, Corigliano has made some changes in orchestration and clarified some parts, according to conductor Lewis. Even so, he will have to make his own adjustments because of space limitations at Bovard.

He’s trimming the violin section, seating the orchestra conventionally instead of following some of the composer’s indications and placing what the composer wants to be an offstage piano--representing the “ghost” memory of the deceased friend to whom Corigliano dedicated the work--on stage.

“It will be covered with a screen so that, hopefully, it is almost invisible,” Lewis says. “How we will emulate the offstage sound, I have no idea. . . . All these reservations notwithstanding, I hope that the piece will be very effective on its own terms.”