Nick Ariondo Acts Accordionly : Music: The composer and teacher, who plays Sunday in Long Beach as part of a five-day festival, gives the instrument respect.

By BENJAMIN EPSTEIN

Aug. 23, 1995 12 AM PT

SPECIAL TO THE TIMES

Granted, Chopin may be among the most idiomatically pianistic of composers. But a keyboard is a keyboard is a keyboard, right? A Chopin etude would fly on the harpsichord, a Chopin sonata on the organ?

Uh, hardly.

But wait--how about the “Fantasie Impromptu” on accordion?

Now you’re talking.

“It’s hard for people to imagine what in the world it would be like to perform all this Chopin on an accordion,” says Los Angeles accordionist Nick Ariondo, 46, who’s just released an album titled “The Chopin Project.”

“It was even hard for Willard Palmer, keyboard editor-in-chief for Alfred Music Publishing--and Palmer is an accordionist,” said Ariondo, who plays Sunday in the closing concert of the Accordion Federation of North America competition and music festival, which begins today at the Hyatt Regency Hotel in Long Beach. (Related story, F2.)

“But [after hearing the album] he thought the power was there, and the nuances--even more of the nuances on the accordion because you have the expression of the bellows.”

Ariondo felt compelled to make his latest cassette, his third for Acco-Music Publishing, for one simple reason:

“You hear a piece here, one there,” he said, “but nobody’s done a complete recording of Chopin on accordion.”

Until now. Included on Ariondo’s are Polonaises in A, Op. 40, No. 1, and A-flat, Op. 53; a half-dozen waltzes; the Prelude in E Minor, Op. 28, No. 4; the Nocturne in E-flat, Op. 9, No. 2, and the “Fantasie Impromptu,” Op. 66.

“I also play piano, but I didn’t think as a pianist,” Ariondo said. “I maneuver [the music] in an orchestral manner. If you think orchestrally, you think in terms of melody and tone and color. Accordion is about timbres and textures. The piano has full color also, but it’s built on percussion. If I took this note by note and worried about every octave, it would be impossible--and sound sterile.”

The Pittsburgh-born musician has played accordion since he was 7 (“My background was Italian; it was an ethnic thing,” he said), studying with Anthony Galla-Rini and Tommy Gumina. (Galla-Rini, 92, opens the Accordion Federation’s 40th anniversary event with a workshop today from noon to 4 p.m.)

In 1980, Ariondo earned a master’s degree in music with a focus on composition and performance from Cal State Los Angeles. He returned to the university 10 years later as director of accordion studies and continues in that post today.

Ariondo has composed--solo music, chamber music and concertos--or arranged almost everything in his current repertory.

As to which of Chopin’s works translate best, Ariondo wouldn’t commit.

“Each person will listen differently--as an accordionist, a violinist, a pianist . . . and that is how they’ll hear them,” he said. “Willard liked the Polonaises. [Milton Stern, piano professor emeritus at CSULA] loved the Waltzes. You like the ‘Fantasie Impromptu.’ I like all of them.”

Ariondo views this week’s AFNA event more as a performance opportunity for students than as a high-caliber competition. Fact is, Ariondo is optimistic about the caliber of accordion players almost everywhere except the United States.

“There is lots of new music for accordion being written in Northern Europe and Canada,” he said. “In China, I understand there are masses of accordion schools filled with young, ambitious students.

“In this country, the accordion is taught in mostly a business-structured way. Students go to a school and learn to play . . . but for them to go on to a higher category, it’s not there. The winners in all this are whoever sells the accordions, whoever sells the methods. . . .

“We’re not having the teachers we used to have, like Galla-Rini,” he continued. “We’re not having an influx of young people to be the true virtuosos they could be. We’re losing the serious teacher, and we’re losing the discipline.”

In Europe, Ariondo says, the discipline is on the rise.

“There’s the Coupe Mondial, a first-class world competition,” he noted. “You have to be under 30 to compete, and you have some marvelous people going in. It’s held in a different country each year. Usually the Russians end up winning. They’re high-energy performers, and their technique is incredible.”

But there’s something about even the top-echelon competitions that bothers Ariondo.

“They’re still not up to par with [those for] strings, the violin, the piano,” he said. “Somebody wins, but they remain within the accordionist regime. . . . When major virtuosos win something like that, they should be exposed in concert--in recitals, in chamber concerts, with symphony orchestras. I haven’t seen that happen yet.

“I won three times the [Accordion Federation’s] Grand Prix. But you win the competition, then, Kiddo, you’re on your own after that.”

Ariondo did well on his own after that. In 1987, he was the first American winner of the Castelfidaro Prize of the International Composers Competition in Italy (for his “Kalamatiano for Viola and Free-Bass Accordion”). The same year he was soloist for the premiere of Russian composer Nicolai Chaikin’s Accordion Concerto with the American Youth Symphony at UCLA’s Royce Hall.

Orange County appearances include a performance of his “Arabesque for Strings and Accordion” on the Pacific Symphony’s chamber series in 1989. Last year, he performed his Accordion Concerto in G Minor, which he composed with the late Edward Hasharian, with the Brentwood Symphony.

What it might take to improve public perceptions of the instrument in this country is anybody’s guess.

“Whenever you hear accordion on the media, it’s some guy who plays Polish music in his restaurants,” Ariondo said. “The public is missing the serious side of the instrument. I don’t mean that in a snobbish way--I may be a serious accordionist, but when I play waltzes or polkas, I’m there.

“There are keyboard players in rock groups doing a magnificent job. But I’d like to see the accordion [presented] by virtuosos, by players really equipped to handle it. Let more of the virtuoso music be seen and heard on television and radio, not just the fun-time stuff.”

Which type of accordion doesn’t matter, he added: “Buttons, piano keyboard, chords or free-bass--the accordion is difficult no matter what. I tell students, no matter what the configuration, listen and learn to play it to the best of your ability. But play it like a violinist can play, like a pianist can play. . . .”

The professor in Ariondo couldn’t resist putting the call out:

“Where can I find students to play some serious Chopin?”