Detroit Free Press from Detroit, Michigan • Page 61

today's tv interviews; 11:30 ABC: Ralph Nader, consumer advocate. 11:30 CBS: Robert Oakley, State Department ambas-sador-at-large for counterterrorism. 12:00 NBC: Energy Secretary John Herrington. Complete tv updates, radio, soaps: Page 7E Sunday, April 6, 1986 SHIRLEY EDER CALENDAR ART dftroit rnrr pnrss Call Entertainment: 222-6828 SOUND JUDGMENT 2 i Dob Talbert Symphonies play musical chairs Temporary parks truce gives Ford a breather Insider's Notebook That temporary truce between the Rev. Jim HolleyJoe Madison camp and the Rev.

Charles AdamsHorace Sheffield forces that will stall any major civil disobedience in Dearborn's parks, until at least lohn Guinn classics It was a Detroit Symphony concert, and the final notes of a composition were just fading away. "Is that guy still alive?" a man sitting behind me asked his wife, referring to the composer. "Yes," his wife said. "According to the program, he was born in 1936, but there's no death date listed." "Then somebody should get him," the man said. The point is, everyone who attends any orchestra's concerts must submit to someone else's ideas about programming, guest conductors and guest soloists.

That someone else actually several people working together, but the bulk of the work is done by a staff member usually called the artistic administrator. It is the artistic administrator, normally planning seasons two years in advance, who must juggle schedules, tempera- opportune time to look at how American orchestras construct a season. WITHIN THE past few decades, the process has undergone major changes. At one time, before orchestras were year-round enterprises, the orchestra manager and the music director simply sat down and plotted out the coming season. Today, most major orchestras the American Sympho- ny Orchestra League currently lists 30 American orchestras as "major," based on annual budgets of at least $3.4 million operate under 52-week contracts, and many music, directors hold two or three different orchestral positions simultaneously.

See SYMPHONY, Page 5E ments, managers, contracts, budgets, repertoire, and other variables in order to put together a season that will be acceptable to the music director and cause listeners to come back for more. As this is the time of year when many orchestras announce their fall-winter schedules the Detroit Symphony '86-'87 season should be out in a few weeks it is also an May, caused a temporary sigh of relief in Ford's Dearborn world headquarters. Didn't ex-chairman Phil Caldwell warn successor Don Petersen that the Dearborn parks situation could become the worst PR problem Ford has ever had, potentially worse than the Pinto gas tank mess? Caldwell even suggested, insiders say, that if GM can pressure South African government to open city beaches to Review our critic's ideal DSO season and send us yours Holley Pi 3 Program Witold Lutoslawski, conductor Lutoslawski: Symphony No. 1 (1947) Lutoslawski: Symphony No. 2 (1967) Lutoslawski: Symphony No.

3 (1983) Comment: The DSO's performance of What guest artists, guest conductors and musical works would make for your idea of an exciting season for the Detroit Symphony? Time to play artistic administrator. Free Press music critic John Guinn was asked to dream up a season, and his suggestions are listed below. But what would you choose? We want to know. Send us your list of guest artists, conductors, programs and any other comments you'd like to throw in for good measure and we'll publish some readers' suggestions. The prize the soulful satisfaction of pushing your favorites.

Deadline is April 21. Send entries to: John Guinn Detroit Free Press 321 W. Lafayette Blvd. Detroit 48231 -4 fami. 4 if' I ltl Lutoslawski's Symphony No.

3 this season was one of the best I've heard from the orchestra in years. To have the composer himself conduct all three of his symphonies, each with widely differing styles, would be a rare treat. Program II: Giuseppe Sinopoli, conductor Stephen Bishop-Kovacevich, pianist Mendelssohn: "Hebrides" Overture Schumann: Piano Concerto in A-Minor Tchaikovsky: Symphony No. 5 Comment: Sinopoli is one of today's most exciting conductors, one who takes enormous chances with the music and often comes up a winner. I heard him conduct the New York Philharmonic in Tchaikovsky's Fifth last fall, and it was the most revealing performance of that work I've heard.

Sinopoli would also find new glories In Mendelssohn's haunting overture. Bishop-Kovacevich studied with Dame Myra Hess, the late British pianist whose recording of the Schumann Piano Concerto is considered by most to be definitive. Any successful symphony season will include staples from the repertoire by Mozart, Beethoven (pictured above), Brahms and the rest of the gang. blacks in Johannesburg, Ford should be able to do the same thing in its own backyard. Two, possibly three semi-shocking local divorces of bicoastal interest could well be occupying chitchat time of a great many well-connected Bloom-field Hills-Grosse Pointe party goersthrowers.

Some families seem to have all the interesting divorces, don't they? And isn't one wife shedding a biggie already asking friends if they know "any nice guys?" Tiger manager Sparky Anderson's tough-guy stance this spring urging Alan Trammel! to play over shoulder pain and his hard-nosed "I'll bring my violin" answer to Darrell Evans' whining about DH platooning drew private words of admiration from the Tigers' toughest pair of team players, Kirk Gibson and Lance Parrish, according to mutual friends. Lance and Gibby can't stand whiners. Sparky's in control again, just like '84. When queried on a hot rumor, the owners of the swankiest of the swank, the London Chop House's Max and Lanie Pincus, say they are not selling. Quoth Lanie: "Absolutely not.

Never! No. Nothing! Not true. No way!" She forgot Nada! and Nyet! Were Jeff Elliot and Jerry St. James just visiting old pals at WMJC-FM recently? Or is there something brewing at the misfiring Magic to bring back the popular morning team now exiled in Chicago's radiob-land? Bet on 'em returning, at least via taped bits. And wasn't Magic pining after longtime Detroit DJ Tom Shannon to return from Buffalo before money got in the way? WINNERS: The newsweeklys Time, for beautifully illustrating its lead baseball Opening Day story with a wonderful photo of an empty, waiting Tiger Stadium; Newsweek's Pete Axthelm, for picking the Tigers overconfident to to win the AL East.

LOSER: The 1985-86 Detroit Red Wings, the all-time most ineffective Detroit professional sports team. What do you mean, don't forget the Detroit Wheels? PARTING SHOT: Shades of Khrushchev! When Jac LeGof was asked about going full-time at 6 o'clock on Channel 4 in a head-to-head battle against Channel 7's Rich Fisher (with whom Jeanne Findlater replaced him at Channel 7 because LeGoff was too old), LeGof replied: "Oh, man, I want to bury them!" In alphabetical order: David Atherton, Gary Bertini, Catherine Comet, Dennis Russell Davies, Charles Dutoit, Sixten Ehrling, Witold Lutoslawski, Jerzy Sem-kow, Giuseppe Sinopoli, Leonard Slatkin, Michael Tilson Thomas. Any successful symphony season will include staples from the repertoire by Mozart, Beethoven, Brahms and the rest of the gang. What distinguishes a great season is the judicious mixture of staples with less-often-programmed pieces from all stylistic periods that deserve to be heard. Among the latter, I would include: Lutoslawski's Concerto for Orchestra, Barber's Violin Concerto, Reich's "Tehil-lim," Haydn's "Creation," Mendelssohn's "Scotch" and "Reformation" symphonies, Bartok's Viola Concerto, Zwilich's Symphony No.

1, Hindemith's "Mathis der Maler," Smetana's complete "Ma Vlast," Nielsen's Symphony No. 2, Harris' Symphony No. 3, Del Tredici's "Final Alice." In alphabetical order: Pianists Stephen Bishop-Kovacevich, Walter Klien, Alicia de Larrocha, Radu Lupu, Murray Perahia, Menachem Pressler and Rudolf Serkin. Violinists Kyung-Wha Chung, Ida Haendel, Gidon Kremer, Anne-Sophie Mutter, Frank Peter Zimmermann; cellists Lynn Harrell, Yo-Yo Ma. Singers Kathleen Battle, Hildegard Behrens, Claudine Carlson, Vinson Cole, Ghena Dimitrova, Barbara Hendricks and Samuel Ramey.

DSO music director Gunther Herbig. Program III: Gunther Herbig, conductor Anne-Sophie Mutter, violinist Barber: Overture to "The School for Scandal" Barber: Violin Concerto Zwilich: Symphony No. 1 Comment: German violinist Anne-Sophie Mutter, who made her DSO debut under Herbig last April, is one of the finest of the younger crop of violinists. It would be fascinating to see what she would do with Barber's lyrical concerto. Herbig, who seems to have a strong affinity for contemporary music and who will conduct the world premiere of Ellen Taaffe Zwilich's Piano Concerto at Meadow Brook this summer, should do well with Barber's overture and Zwilich's Symphony No.

1. Program IV: Sixten Ehrling, conductor Siv Wennberg, soprano James King, tenor Wagner: Die Walkure (concert version) Comment: These same forces presented Act I of "Walkure" during the -1983-84 season and nearly took the roof off Ford Auditorium. Let's go whole hog now, regardless of the length. With such performers, the time will fly by. names 8 faces From the DSO itself, cellist Italo Babini, oboist Donald Baker, flutist Shaul Ben-Meir, violinist Bogos Mort-chikian, trumpeter Ramon Parcells, trom-bonist Ray Turner, clarinetist Paul Schaller and bassoonist Robert Williams.

How about turning the Great Performers series into a festival of Michigan musicians who have made it to the big time, but who too rarely appear with the DSO? Among them: pianists Ruth Laredo, James Tocco and Ralph Votapek; violinists Ani Kavafian, Ida Kavafian, Joseph Silverstein, Daniel Majeske and Charles Treger; singers Maria Ewing and Ara Berberian. -4 Maria Ewing is a singer from Michigan. Alicia de Larrocha analysis Lyrics explode with concern Thanks to two locals, Arnold gets a last name GIN A JORDON of Ypsilanti and David Parizon of Detroit are in for a treat Monday. Those two Free Press readers have been named the winners in the "Give Arnold and Tommy a Last Name Contest" run by madcap "Arnold" cartoonist Kevin McCormick. In Monday's strip, McCormick reveals that Tommy will henceforth be named Tommy Jordon (by Gina, as you might suspect) and Arnold's last name will be Melville, thanks to Parizon, a seven-year-old who lives on Melville Street in Detroit.

McCormick said most of the entries came from Michigan but declined to elaborate on what the lucky pair will get. "I don't want people rioting in the streets," he said, admitting only that the prizes will fit into a box. He did not say what size. DOROTHY HAMILL, Tai Babilonia and Randy Gardner and several other good skates will NOT appear at Masonic Temple April 8-13 in a gala ice show. But Sting sings about the Russians, and Genesis' Mike Rutherford writes about the children.

The Rolling Stones wonder what life will be like in the aftermath, heavy metal monger Ozzy Osbourne is worried about the destruction, and pop prince Rick Springfield fears public apathy. For Prince and Blue oyster Cult, it's an excuse for a bit of a party. The common ground for these diverse pop stars is nuclear weapons and the threat of nuclear war, a theme that cuts across musical genres and individual artists' styles. Cail them the children of "The Eve of Destruction," a generation of performers putting the bomb to the beat. Spurred on by mature insight, parenthood and increasing social consciousness, they're coming clean with their fears about nuclear weapons and their fate after a nuclear war.

lots of you don believe it, reports the Masonic box office. Why? A great many tickets for the show have not been returned for refund. "We'd hate to have anybody coming up here Tuesday expecting a show," said a spokeswoman. Refunds are available at the box office or point of purchase; the show was canceled because early ticket sales were soft. Am -'r 1 Why interest is keen in WGPR By STEPHEN ADVOKAT Free Press Communications Writer Media analysts say the current interest in acquiring WGPR-TV (Channel 62) lies mostly in its potential.

Within the last six months, representatives of more than a dozen groups have quietly approached executives at the nation's first black-owned television station expressing an interest in buying the UHF outlet and its sister station, WGPR-FM. Last week, a group led by Lansing businessman Joel Ferguson and to include'sports stars Dave Bing and Thomas Hearns went public with its offer. Tenicia Gregory, WGPR vice-president and general manager, said so far all offers to buy the stations have been refused. "I don't have any crystal ball," Gregory said last week. "But we have taken all inquiries to the board, and they have been uninterested in selling." Ferguson says changes in the leadership of the Masonic group owning the station may change that soon.

The Masonic leadership that succeeded Dr. Banks is suing his widow, station executive Ivy Banks, over station control. And turmoil in the Banks family over the estate might also serve as an impetus to sell. SURVEYS INDICATE few watch Channel 62, and sales figures show advertisers are also limited. But building interest in the property rests on the belief that with a relatively small investment in equipment and programming, Channel 62 could pose substantial competition for prosperous independents Channels 20 and 50.

And Channel 50, for example, brought $70 million on the market two years ago. See WGPR, Page 6E Gary Graff music 4. fmr i Hamill STANLEY SAX of Birmingham, on the other hand, knows about big sales. He has acquired a long-lost Charles Willson Peale portrait for his American art collection. The 50-by-40-inch portrait, painted in the 1790s, is of David Rittenhouse, an 18th Century Pennsylvania astronomer, clockmaker and statesman; it turned up in a bank vault, where it had been stored for about 20 years.

Sax, who already owns two Peale portraits and also collects American clocks, paid J45 1,000 for the portrait at a Massachusetts auction and later told the New York Times, "I've been interested in Charles Willson Peale for some years and also in Rittenhouse." The price, an auction record for the artist, was considerably higher than the top pre-sale estimate of $300,000. Edited by JOHN SMYNTEK lit. ill wars cbitiributod Sting, who was born Gordon Matthew Sumner and is the former leader of the Police, sings "Russians." about the threat of nuclear war. "Wooden Ships." Much of that material, however, was recorded during rock's message-oriented period of the late '60s and early '70s, and the subject was seldom pursued by the trend-mongers of the mid-'70s. The emergence of punk and new wave later in the decade brought it back, however, most notably on songs like the Clash's "London Calling," Elvis Costello's "Waiting for the End of the World," the Jam's "A-Bomb on Wardour Street" and Devo's "Space Junk." By late 1982, some artists even had hits about nuclear war.

In 1 999," for example, Prince sang about "dancing my life away" while the bombs fell around him. And a German See MUSIC, Page 6E "I'm not becoming a politician," Osbourne said. "The simple fact is that I'm scared. By saying my little piece and getting my thoughts out, maybe somebody, somehow, will go, 'OK, let's think about this some Barry McGuire's 1965 hit, "The Eve of Destruction," was certainly one of the first to address the nuclear threat, but a rich if limited legacy of apocalyptic pop songs followed it. IT'S BEEN a prime topic for earthy singer-songwriters like Bob Dylan Hard Rain's Gonna Fall," "This Wheel's on Fire," "Crash on the Jackson Browne the and Kenny Loggins Jim Messina as well as for bands like Creedence Clearwater Revival Moon and Chicago the City Members of Jefferson Airplane and Crosby, Stills Nash even teamed up for an anti-war anthem called.