For a musician to make the transition from star performer to lauded conductor is a risky venture. The Russian virtuoso pianist Vladimir Ashkenazy took up the baton midway in his career and became as recognized for his conducting prowess as for his keyboard ability. On the other hand, reigning tenor superstar Placido Domingo has been laboring for some time in the operatic orchestra pit and has yet to convince the critics who adore his singing that he should continue conducting.

After Friday’s (Oct. 14) San Diego Symphony Concert at Copley Symphony Hall, I am happy to report that violinist Pinchas Zukerman wields the baton and violin bow with equal finesse. As guest conductor in works by Richard Strauss, Robert Schumann, and W. A. Mozart, and as soloist in J. S. Bach’s “E Major Violin Concerto, BWV 1041,” Zukerman not only charmed the ample audience, but elicited superlative results from the symphony players.

If someone had asked me after the concert which Zukerman I liked better—the conductor or the violinist—I would have stammered, “Well . . . both; who could choose?”

Perhaps it is his understated but supremely confident approach to both playing and conducting that sets him apart in a refreshing way. He played the Bach Concerto with a robust, almost jovial vigor that never sacrificed clarity of line or sleek, well-balanced Baroque proportions: it is his signature approach, which we have come to expect over his decades of performance.

But more instructive was his leadership of the Concerto, standing in the center front of the orchestra (his back to the harpsichord, crisply played by Mary Barranger). While he turned to the two dozen strings around him to cleanly commence each movement, once started, he gave them few conducting cues other than the drive of his own playing and some subtle but emphatic body language. Conductors who conduct and play Mozart Piano Concertos from the keyboard typically start waving their hands at the orchestra whenever there is a rest in the piano part, but Zukerman eschewed such directorial enthusiasms, and trusted his compatriots to stay with him.

With rock-solid leadership from Principal Contrabass Jeremy Kurtz-Harris—the bass line always drives Baroque music—the orchestra stayed with and supported Zukerman throughout the Bach. This collegial unanimity happily spilled over into Mozart’s Symphony No. 35 (“Haffner”), which immediately followed the Bach Concerto, and Zukerman’s supreme economy of gesture on the podium brought forth a welcome bouyant, effervescent polish to this familiar symphony.His detailed account of the slow movement savored the bloom of each thematic idea without the slightest sense of affectation, and the spirited outer movements sported a well-disciplined dazzle, thanks in no small portion to the precise playing of the wind sections.

Zukerman opened the concert with Strauss’s infrequently aired “Metamorphosen,” a somber tone poem written just before the end of World War II. Indeed, the San Diego Symphony archivist noted in the printed program that this orchestra had never performed this work before Friday!

The piece, chastely scored for precisely 23 strings, was commissioned by the Swiss conductor Paul Sacher, and Strauss began composing a mere three weeks after the Allied fire-bombing of Dresden. It is a profound, densely woven meditation on loss, whose subtle contrasts of mood Zukerman and the players negotiated with sensitivity and structural clarity. Hearing it, however, I could not banish the moral censure I felt towards Strauss for grieving so deeply the loss of the great cultural treasures of Germany, e.g. the Munich opera house and the concert halls and museums of Dresden, but finding no musical voice for the despair over the human carnage and genocide that the war brought.

Principal Viola Che-Yen Chen and his section found aptly dark, even disturbing, colors for the central threnody motif that unifies “Metamorphosen,” and the rich timbre of the strings overall drew the listener in, in spite of the unsettling subject matter. Compared to the ebullient concert openers that Music Director Jahja Ling usually chooses, Zukerman’s choice of this Strauss work was as bold as it was rewarding.

Amanda Forsyth, Principal Cellist of Canada’s National Arts Centre Orchestra and wife of maestro Zukerman, gave a sumptuous account of Schumann’s “A Minor Cello Concerto.” Less dramatic and structurally ambitious than, say, the Elgar Cello Concerto or the Brahms Double Concerto, Schumann’s Cello Concerto is more of a lively, ambling conversation between the soloist and the orchestra. Conductor and cellist appeared in complete agreement as to tempo, phrasing, and all those myriad details of performance. Perhaps the concerto should have been subtitled "Symphonia domestica."

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