Final Concert

Henri Temianka's California Chamber Virtuosi series at Pepperdine University, Malibu, ended its latest season Saturday night with adept musicianship and programming. The concert offered three substantial French pieces from the late Romantic era in celebration of the bicentennial of the French Revolution.

The three-member governing board of financially plagued South Coast Symphony has announced that the full orchestra will play its final concert of the season as scheduled on April 29 at Orange Coast College in Costa Mesa. "This was a commitment we felt we had to make to our subscribers and to the community," board member Richard J. Burrell said.

Working with experts is the name of the game in postgraduate courses. Thus, it was entirely fitting that for the final exercises of its 1987 session, the 98 members of the Los Angeles Philharmonic Institute Orchestra had the opportunity to play Prokofiev's Fifth Symphony under the leadership of Andre Previn in Hollywood Bowl on Sunday night.

San Diego Symphony musicians will conduct a series of concerts in January and February. Even if the current impasse in contract negotiations is resolved this month, the earliest possible date for the musicians to perform in Symphony Hall under the symphony association's aegis would be March 1. Since the 1986-87 winter season was canceled, the musicians have played several ad hoc concerts on their own.

Programs have been announced for the pre-subscription-season, three-concert Beethoven Festival to be played by the Los Angeles Philharmonic, under guest conductor Kurt Sanderling, in the Wiltern Theatre, Oct. 5, 10 and 11. At those programs, German pianist Peter Roesel, making his West Coast debut, will play Beethoven's five piano concertos. For the opening concert, Oct. 5, Roesel will offer the Concertos in B-flat (No. 2) and C minor (No. 3), on a program beginning with the "Egmont" Overture.

He's back. And not a moment too soon. Andre Previn made it to Hollywood Bowl on Sunday just in time to conduct the final concert of the Los Angeles Philharmonic Institute Orchestra. His presence on the podium was cause to cheer--for starters, it marked the first appearance by a Philharmonic music director presiding over the summer training orchestra.

The ideal string quartet would combine an abundant resonance of sound, splendid but internalized technical skills and the broadest emotional range. Its four players would be equals in musical thought, partners in building balances, architects of sound structures. Such quartets do exist, of course, but they all have names.

"The New Long Beach Symphony," declares the brochure, "is alive!" And quite well. At least that was the diagnosis Thursday, when the orchestra gave its final concert of the current, cautiously short subscription series at the Terrace Theater. The program closed with Sibelius' Second Symphony, a severe test for any orchestra. The technical difficulties don't pose the greatest challenge here. Rather, it is the task of weaving the seemingly disparate units into a continuous whole.

U2 and Sting are among the performers scheduled to appear at the Forum on June 6 as part of a six-city concert tour to raise funds for Amnesty International USA. Information on tickets isn't expected until late this month. Mary Daly, director of communications for the nonprofit, U.S. section of Amnesty International, said the series of shows will begin June 4 in San Francisco and include stops in Dallas, Atlanta and Chicago. The final concert at Giants Stadium in East Rutherford, N.J.