Knowing the Scores : Talmi Relies on Love of Music, Not on Terror

Not everyone can conduct in Munich, Vienna and London. Someone has to lead the bands in Bakersfield, Waterloo and St. Paul. So, while Yoav Talmi makes the headlines in the big leagues, Thomas Nee makes his own path on a different circuit, with different thoughts and ideas. This is a look at two men doing the same thing, but differently.

When conductor Yoav Talmi was a student at Juilliard in the 1960s, he helped pay his way through school by playing accordion for $10 or $25 a gig for bar mitzvahs and weddings.

Later, as a struggling young Israeli conductor in London in the early 1970s, Talmi was unable to get a single concert booking for two years.

But after winning a conducting contest, his serious career was under way.

A measure of his growth came at ceremonies introducing him as the San Diego Symphony’s new music director designate last week when orchestra officials announced a $500,000 gift to cover his next four years in San Diego.

Talmi, 46, chose San Diego over several other suitors, he said, chiefly because of the “high standard of the orchestra, the quality.”

Talmi, who led a list of about a half dozen contenders for the music director’s post, has been a frequent guest conductor since first leading the orchestra in December, 1987.

“I was very taken with the orchestra,” Talmi said. “The potential of this orchestra is enormously high. With constant, thorough, pedantic work, we can develop this orchestra to be one of the best in the country.”

Talmi’s approach to music-making will doubtless contrast with that of his predecessor, David Atherton. A number of orchestra musicians here have said Atherton had a reputation for caustic remarks and he terrified them.

Talmi’s podium manner is different from Atherton’s, and is based on two influences in his life, Hungarian conductor Istvan Kertesz and German conductor Bruno Walter.

“Both of them got, I believe, wonderful results out of the orchestra,” Talmi said. “The results came from a deep musical conviction, from the love of music as opposed to getting the results from the orchestra out of fear.”

He noted that another school of conducting, including Toscanini, Georg Szell and Fritz Reiner also achieved “wonderful results, but the musicians were scared to death, really scared to death.

“I do believe it’s possible, especially in our day, to get wonderful results from the orchestra without hitting people on the head, without insulting, without trying to frighten the players, but out of respect for your musicianship.”

Talmi envisions “hundreds of things” he would like to accomplish in San Diego.

“All of them I see happening the first season when I come here as music director.”

But what about now?

“You’ll have to have a lot of patience,” he said earnestly. “That’s all I can say.”

A day after enduring a 28-hour trip from Israel, a sagging Talmi guided the 81-member San Diego orchestra through a 2 1/2-hour morning rehearsal of Mozart and Mahler.

During an afternoon photo session in a day full of interviews and appointments, Talmi asked whether he could sit down.

“In rehearsal, I manage because we get into a very exciting type of work that brings a lot of adrenalin to the blood. I’m all right,” he said. “But, when the rehearsal is over, I start to feel that I am now in the middle of the night, and I start to get very tired. My legs are about ready to give out.”

Possessing a disciplined intellect, Talmi, whose native tongue is Hebrew, is also conversant in German, Dutch, French and English, though his English is deliberate and thoughtful. He is also learning Italian, setting aside 30 minutes a day for study.

Colleagues in Tel Aviv--where the blue-eyed, soft-spoken Talmi held several musical posts--said he has a reputation for strong organizational skills and diligence. Those traits will serve him well in San Diego.

Saddled with a $3.6-million debt from the purchase and renovation of the 2,250-seat Symphony Hall in 1985, the orchestra is making its comeback from near disaster two years ago. Talmi’s appointment is a major part of the rebuilding.

He fills a 27-month vacancy in the music director’s position that opened when British conductor David Atherton resigned in February, 1987, amid a bitter labor dispute that resulted in the cancellation of the 1986-87 season. Besides serious differences between the players and the board, Atherton had alienated many orchestra members because of what many considered a high-handed attitude.

Relations between the symphony management and the players are improving, and new contract talks will start in June.

The symphony has other problems, however. Average attendance at the symphony’s subscription concerts still hovers below 60% audience capacity.

“This will be my first aim: Increase audiences,” Talmi said. “This is the first and foremost challenge that we have. If we don’t have audiences, then we hardly have the right to exist.”

With the concerts already set for next season, Talmi, whose three-year contract begins in October, 1990, does not expect to play a big role in building attendance until the 1990-91 season.

As music director of the Israeli Chamber Orchestra in Tel Aviv for four years until mid-1988, Talmi helped build concert audiences.

“He made an important contribution to the orchestra as musical director and conductor,” said the orchestra’s managing director, Roni Abramson. “He helped improve the orchestra’s standing locally and abroad.”

Under Talmi’s leadership, the Israeli group recorded two records for international distribution and went on foreign concert tours that included Japan and the United States, where it played at Carnegie Hall and, in March, 1988, in El Cajon.

Noting how long San Diego had been without a musical director, Gad Levertoff, first viola for the chamber group, said, “He has a lot of work to do in San Diego, to rebuild the orchestra, but he’s very good at that.”

Ora Shiran grew up with Talmi in Kibbutz Merhavia but had not seen him for 20 years before she joined the chamber as concertmistress.

“It’s difficult for any Israeli to conduct in Israel,” she said. “This is such a small place.”

Levertoff concurred, saying, “Talmi grew up with some of the musicians. He was their friend, and it was hard to establish professional distance.

“I think it will be easier for him in San Diego,” Levertoff continued, “because he can be more objective. I also think his style is better suited to a symphony orchestra than a chamber orchestra. He likes big production.”

Talmi was born April 28, 1943, in Israel at Kibbutz Merhavia, where his parents and sister still live. His father, a high school music teacher, encouraged Talmi’s musical pursuits, even scoring his 5-year-old’s first compositions.

After attending the Rubin Academy of Music in Tel Aviv, Talmi did a mandatory three-year hitch with the Israeli Army. After basic training, he joined the army band, playing the euphonium, a brass instrument like a baritone.

Talmi applied for the army band so he could moonlight, studying at the Israeli Academy of Music.

“I only had three years,” he said. “I worked like hell and managed to finish four years’ work in three years.”

While in the army, Talmi won a competition that attracted 208 entries to compose the official Israeli army march.

Today, his march is played at virtually all army functions and is used by army radio stations to sign on and off each day.

Army life also held another benefit for Talmi. He met a piccolo player and flutist in the Army band named Er’ella, whom he married. Today, she is a concert flutist. They have a son, 20, and a daughter, 15. His wife will join him here later.

At Juilliard, Talmi earned a degree in composition and conducting. While still in school, he won the 1969 Koussevitsky Conducting Prize at Tanglewood, the Boston Symphony’s summer home and where young conductors can hone their craft under the likes of Leonard Bernstein and Seiji Ozawa.

Shortly after leaving Juilliard, he served a brief stint as assistant conductor in the Louisville Symphony.

But, after that, he ran into some hard years in London, where five symphonies make their home.

“I could not get one single concert anywhere,” Talmi said. “I could not get a manager, an agent to represent me.”

Talmi, who on principle dislikes musical contests, said, “Out of desperation, I then participated in the Rupert Conductor’s Competition for young conductors.”

He won. He found a good manager, and, “Suddenly, the door opened for many engagements in London, and things started to move.”

But he avoided the limelight, he said, by choice.

A year after winning the Rupert, Talmi began one of the most formative periods in his career away from the bright lights and big cities. He took the position as artistic director and conductor of the Gelders Orchestras in Arnhem, the Netherlands from 1974 to 1980.

“Following the advice of (conductor Herbert von) Karajan on purpose, I decided to sit in a relatively small city and work hard with my own orchestra, trying to (plumb the depths) of all the repertoire that a conductor needs to know. It meant taking a lot of time to thoroughly study and perform all the Beethoven symphonies, the Schumann symphonies, the Brahms, the Mendelsohn, Bruckner and Mahler symphonies, not to mention of course, Mozart and Haydn.”

At Arnhem, he played the staples of the repertoire two or three times. When he had a chance to perform as a last-minute substitute with the vaunted Berlin Philharmonic, he was ready and was invited back.

Later, he was guest conductor with the Munich Philharmonic until a new general director named Sergiu Celibidache. was appointed. Celibidache did not think any conductor other than himself should direct his orchestra more than once a year and asked that the other conductors turn in their contracts, Talmi said.

But Talmi was in good company--also let go were guest conductors Karl Bohm and Eugen Jochum--, and it doesn’t seem to have hurt his career.

Carl Schrag contributed to this report from Tel Aviv.