Tugging at her heartstrings and violin strings

By Chris Pasles

Jan. 22, 2005 12 AM PT

Times Staff Writer

Early on Christmas morning 1870, Richard Wagner woke his wife, Cosima, with a birthday surprise. The composer had lined up 13 musicians on the narrow stairs leading to her bedroom at their home in Triebschen, Switzerland.

At exactly 7:30 a.m., he gave the downbeat that gently launched a work first called the “Triebschen Idyll” and later -- after Wagner released it to the world -- the “Siegfried Idyll.” Cosima later wrote in the diary she left for her children that as she listened entranced, she didn’t know if she was awake or still dreaming.

Now Hollywood composer-conductor Joel McNeely (the “Avengers” movie, TV’s “Young Indiana Jones Chronicles”) has produced a similar gift for his wife, Los Angeles Chamber Music concertmaster Margaret Batjer.

McNeely’s “Two Portraits,” which premieres this weekend, won’t be a surprise, however. The chamber orchestra commissioned the 10-minute-plus work last spring to fill out a program, including the “Siegfried Idyll,” that Batjer will be leading from her chair. And she wound up advising McNeely before he was through.

“I had no idea what he was going to write,” Batjer, 45, said in a joint interview recently in a studio of their spacious Hidden Hills home. “But I knew he would write something great because I have the utmost respect for his talent.”

McNeely, also 45, wasn’t so sure of himself.

“It was daunting, I got to tell you, really seriously,” he said. “Because you think, what if she really doesn’t like it? What if it stinks? What is that going to do to our marriage? I mean, she’s never going to look at me the same way. I could fail in so many ways.”

That included sharing a program with not only Wagner but also Mozart and Schubert. “I could not even think of that or I would have been paralyzed.”

Still, McNeely said, “Ultimately, you have to shove all of that aside. You cannot think about Margaret. You cannot think about those composers. You just have to put yourself in a place where you’re true to your own ear, to what pleases you.”

He said that he first thought of writing for the chamber orchestra as a whole but that as he worked on the piece, it evolved into a serenade with a more prominent violin part.

“More and more, I couldn’t deny the fact that with the ideas I had and the direction I was going in, I wanted to hear Margaret’s voice above the others,” he said. “The interesting thing about writing for people you know is all of a sudden you start to hear their musicality as opposed to an instrument. You start to hear their musicality as a voice.”

Batjer’s is a voice McNeely has known for almost 31 years. The couple met when they were students at a summer Interlochen Arts Camp in 1974. They got married in 1985. They have two children, Joshua, 10, and Claire, 6. Both kids are violinists, but Joshua also plays soccer and football.

His son’s interest in sports, in fact, wound up throwing a curve into McNeely’s plans. He broke a finger playing football with Joshua just as he was ready to start sketching out the new piece.

The result was that he couldn’t write at the piano, using pencil and paper, as he usually does. He had to compose at a desk, away from the keyboard.

“I was afraid it would blow the whole process up, but it didn’t,” he said, explaining that the actual writing followed a long period of mental gestation.

“Anybody gives you something creative to do, immediately your mind starts to spin and you start working the puzzle,” he said. “Six months were going by and I was working the puzzle all the time. I would tell Margaret, and she would say, ‘Yeah, right. Show me the score, bud.’ ‘It’s all up here.’ ‘Yeah, show me the score.’ ”

Said Batjer: “I was a little nervous because I had a concert I was preparing and I was learning a new piece. He didn’t share much during the writing process. He wanted it to be his own thing. I was respectful of that.”

McNeely finally got down to business in early November, and just after Thanksgiving, when he showed Batjer what he had written, she loved it. But she also had some ideas. The two tinkered with the score for about a week.

“She had really amazing input into it,” McNeely said. “When we sat at the piano, she said, ‘Let’s open it up. You’re thinking in small episodic moments, in a very compressed way. Remember, for the concert hall, people will be patient. They will go with you on a little bit longer journey in terms of attention span.’

“That was the best point anyone could have made because it was true. I was thinking in a very compressed time frame.”

Such thinking was only natural for him. Music in films and television is timed to the second -- and often doesn’t last very long.

“To step out from that curtain -- where I don’t have a movie to hide behind -- was one of the most profound musical experiences of my life,” he said.

It was the same for his wife.

“The first night when I heard any of it -- he had broken his finger so he was fumbling on the piano, and I had my violin and I was playing the solo part -- I was so moved and touched,” she said. “His style of writing is very intimate and beautiful and singing. The fact that it’s written for you is so touching.”

In short, the marriage looks as if it will survive.

“Phew!” said McNeely. “We’ll make it.”

Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra

Where: Alex Theatre, 216 N. Brand Blvd., Glendale

When: 8 tonight

Price: $17 to $75

Contact: (213) 622-7001, Ext. 215 or www.laco.org

Also

Where: Royce Hall, UCLA, Westwood

When: 7 p.m. Sunday

Price: $17 to $75