Their Team Doesn’t Get to Play Much : Scheduling Conflicts, Difficulty Booking Recitals Rule Out Many Dates for Gutierrez and Oliveira

On a hectic Monday afternoon recently, violinist Elmar Oliveira motored the 75 miles from his home in Croton-on-Hudson, N.Y., down to pianist Horacio Gutierrez’s Manhattan apartment. They were eager to rehearse for one of their rare duo dates Friday at the Orange County Performing Arts Center, where they’ll grapple with music of Mozart, Beethoven, Brahms and Ravel.

Although the two have been a team for 3 1/2 years, ever since they were booked together for an Avery Fisher Hall birthday concert, they don’t get to perform together much these days. Last year, they didn’t play any dates and in 1992, only two (including the Orange County recital) are booked.

“We’d love to do more, but our (individual) schedules are so busy and there is a difficulty of booking recitals these days,” Oliveira, 41, said in his affable tenor from a phone in Gutierrez’s place earlier this week.

“I’ve seen over the last 10 years the amount of recital programming diminish,” he added. “There’s not so much funding available and there are so many wonderful artists playing and so few recital series. When one is booked for an orchestral engagement, you often get booked again a couple of years later. But for a recital series, it takes much longer to come around again.”

Hmmmm. One couldn’t help but wonder if this reflects a downward shift in the public appetite for recitals. “I don’t think so,” Oliveira said. “I think people still enjoy going to recitals. I think there’s a shift in the public funding.”

Oliveira, the son of a Portuguese immigrant carpenter, shot to fame upon winning the gold medal at the 1978 Tchaikovsky Competition in Moscow. He hasn’t lacked opportunities to play: ever since the Tchaikovsky, his schedule has stayed on an even keel--almost 100 concerts and 300 days on the road per year.

Such was the brouhaha back in 1978 that Columbia Masterworks (now Sony Classical) had the bright idea of teaming Oliveira with his fellow gold medalists that year--cellist Nathaniel Rosen and pianist Mikhail Pletnyov--in a recording of the Tchaikovsky Piano Trio. The whole Tchaikovsky business may have had the effect of creating unrealistically lofty expectations about Oliveira on the part of critics and a public trained to gloat over any American triumph in the “Evil Empire.”

Still, as a veteran of the competition wars long before his mission to Moscow, Oliveira now believes that his Tchaikovsky experience has been an overall plus for him. “When I went to the competition, my view was, ‘Oh, competitions are lousy; they put unrealistic demands on the performers,’ ” he said. “Not everybody can perform under that kind of pressure, and not always do you hear what a performer can do. It depends upon the personal tastes of the judges, and that can be a negative point.

“But after years have passed, I find that there’s a (lot) of good that comes out of them. I think the experience of going through that pressure, the incredible demands that are put on you and the kind of repertoire that you have to prepare--all those things are very good. With certain reservations, I would recommend competitions for young performers.”

Oliveira, however, will not sit still for the kind of rock-style promotion that currently propels some of the younger generation violinists. “I have all due respect for Nigel (Kennedy) and Joshua (Bell), but I abhor that whole approach,” he said firmly. “Not so much Joshua, but the style in which Nigel chooses to orient his career”--including punkish hairstyle and classical-music videos--”really, I’m very turned off by it, though he’s a fine violinist.”

Over the years, Oliveira has shown an enterprising streak from time to time, championing contemporary works such as Ezra Laderman’s Second Violin Concerto and Andrzej Panufnik’s Violin Concerto or digging out overlooked compositions by Glazunov and Joachim. This year, he will be playing Alberto Ginastera’s Violin Concerto for the first time (in Carnegie Hall with the St. Louis Symphony), and Joan Tower is writing a concerto for him to play with the Utah Symphony.

And while Oliveira still finds plenty of new things to say about certain masterworks--the Beethoven concerto in particular--he tries not to run some of the others into the ground. “I’m very careful when I offer repertoire,” he said. “I learned that after the competitions when everyone asked me to play the Tchaikovsky concerto everywhere.

“When I first recorded the Barber concerto, I found everyone asking me to play the Barber all the time. I try to make a point of not letting that happen. After playing the Tchaikovsky so many times, I said at a certain point I will not play the concerto anymore--and that was that . . . “

He pauses. “For a while,” he said, laughing.

* The Orange County Philharmonic Society presents violinist Elmar Oliveira and pianist Horacio Gutierrez in recital on Friday at 8 p.m. at the Orange County Performing Arts Center, 600 Town Center Drive, Costa Mesa. The program will include Mozart’s Sonata in G, K.379; Beethoven’s Sonata in G, Op.30, No.3; Ravel’s Sonata for Violin and Piano, and Brahms’ Sonata No. 3 in D minor, Op. 108. The recital will recognize the Philharmonic Society’s network of women’s committees, which support outreach programs for Orange County schoolchildren. Tickets: $8 to $25. Information: (714) 646-6277.