A House That Music Appreciation Built : Radio: Stockbroker and music lover Aaron Mendelsohn turned his Santa Monica home into a concert hall. Now he has a national audience.

He built it and they have come. In droves.

Stockbroker and music lover Aaron Mendelsohn rebuilt his Santa Monica home and began holding classical concerts in his living room earlier this year, attracting about 100 music buffs for each performance.

“They just show up,” Mendelsohn said. “They wind up getting the kind of emotional and spiritual satisfaction that people would like to get in church or synagogue. . . . I’ve had people tell me this concert series has changed their lives. I had one woman who was going through a very bad divorce tell me this was giving her solace.”

And now Mendelsohn is hearing such testimonials from afar. Since April, the recitals have been broadcast on National Public Radio’s music show “Performance Today,” heard on more than 100 stations nationwide. Locally, it airs on KCSN-FM (88.5) weekdays from 1 to 3 p.m. On Friday, the program will broadcast the most recent concert held at Mendelsohn’s house, which featured violinist Maria Bachmann.

“I just got a letter from Bozeman, Mon., and a letter from Richfield, Conn.,” Mendelsohn said. “The letter from Connecticut said: ‘It was refreshing to hear that at least one person has not given up on achievement of perfection. . . .’ ”

Last year, Mendelsohn and his wife, Leah, had their 1927 Santa Monica bungalow torn down and remade into a 6,000-square-foot home. At its core was a 2,000-square-foot living room/concert hall, built around a 7-foot, 4-inch Bosendorfer grand piano.

“This house started off because my wife wanted more closet space and I needed a better room for the piano,” he said.

They had held a few concerts for friends in their older and much smaller house, but the feeling was very different, Mendelsohn said.

“I used to cram 60 people in a tiny room,” he said. “It was literally like you had to open the windows because they were pressing against the glass.”

Not so today. At violinist Bachmann’s recent performance, there were seats for about 100, and the audience had the benefit of hearing music in an acoustically designed room with a spot-lit stage, soundproofed walls and a 25-foot-high ceiling intended to enhance the sound of the music. They were also treated to coffee and dessert after the show.

Mendelsohn started his home-concert series last October. He intends to hold about a dozen a year; the next one is June 15 but no others are planned until fall. The first one broadcast on “Performance Today” featured the only U.S. appearance of Mikhail Voskresensky, a Soviet pianist who had been touring in Latin America.

The association between Mendelsohn and NPR has all the makings of a successful duet.

“I think Aaron Mendelsohn has a good vision,” said Steve Zakar, special projects consultant for “Performance Today.” “He’s a rare bird these days. There aren’t a whole lot of people doing for music what he’s doing.”

Mendelsohn’s goal is to do something specifically for young, up-and-coming artists: give them much-needed exposure.

“There’s a great amount of talent out there that never gets the opportunity to find expression,” said Mendelsohn, 40. “There are just not enough venues. We’re the only developed country that spends as little for the arts as we do.”

Mendelsohn’s nonprofit Maestro Foundation, formed in 1986 to support and promote classical music, pays the artists who perform at his home and covers the costs of refreshments and seating. People who attend concerts are expected to make donations to the foundation. “A typical contribution,” he said, “is like $1,000.”

Although Mendelsohn has made no special efforts to let people know about his concert series, the word has spread among the 50 members of his foundation and among music aficionados in general.

“This has all has been 100% word of mouth,” Mendelsohn said. “There’s been no advertising, no soliciting, no organized manner of getting the word out. At the very beginning I made some of my friends aware of what we were doing and that was it. It just went from there. Now, if somebody wants to come, they call me so we know if there’s room.”

The unorthodox musical venue seemed to agree with those interviewed at Bachmann’s concert last month.

“This really is ideal--an enlightened patron of the arts, good acoustics, excellent artists and the right amount of people,” said Jan Holmquist, an advertising executive and concert pianist who has attended four concerts at Mendelsohn’s home. “This is what classical music was like in the beginning of the 19th Century. People opened up their homes.”

“This is an example of the private sector taking over what the government is no longer doing,” said Steven Cohn, a composer. “(Mendelsohn) had the imagination and the perseverance to make it come to life and here we are. It’s one of the more commendable things done in the music world in my time.”

Even Bachmann, the featured soloist, had nothing but praise for the experience of concertizing chez Mendelsohn. Bachmann said that she performs at about a half dozen homes around he country each year.

“This has really the best acoustics of any house concert I’ve ever played,” she said. “It really has more of the sound of a big concert hall. . . . It’s also a nice idea because it brings artists and audiences a little bit closer.”

Mendelsohn’s concert series is the culmination of a 30-year love affair with classical music. He was introduced to the form at the age of 10 when his father gave him his first radio.

“I was fiddling through the dial and I landed on KFAC (the now-defunct classical station) and I heard it and that was it,” he said.

While attending UCLA, Mendelsohn studied music, specifically piano, but decided his future was in business.

“The only thing that stood between me and a career in music was talent,” he said.

But driven by his “deep and abiding love for music,” Mendelsohn landed on the perfect solution for a lifetime of being around beautiful music, without actually making it himself.

“I’ve had many people come up and say, ‘That’s what my husband would have liked to have done,’ ” he said. “It makes people feel good to see that somebody had a vision and went out and did it. It makes them feel good that it can be done.”