The New Conductors: Challenges in San Diego, Inland Empire : Robertson Favors a Little Mystery

Stewart Robertson believes in the power of mystique.

As newly appointed music director of the Inland Empire Symphony, Robertson will conduct a five-concert subscription series, beginning Oct. 21, at the California Theatre of Performing Arts in San Bernardino, as well as lead ensembles at local schools and universities. But he won’t pitch at parties for funds for the parent Inland Empire Symphony Assn.

“I don’t think a music director should go out and actually ask for money,” Robertson, 41, said in a recent phone interview from Scotland where he was on vacation. “A lot of American orchestras have gone wrong in seeing their music director as a supersalesman.

“It’s all a question of degree really. I will be involved in fund raising, but I believe there’s a danger in overexposure. A music director has to know the general feeling and pulse of the community, but it’s not necessary for him to be seen at the checkout stand at Safeway. A little bit of mystery goes a long way.”

A resident of Carmel, Robertson has since 1986 been music director of the Santa Fe Symphony, an orchestra with an annual subscription series of six concerts, and the Glimmerglass Opera in Cooperstown, N.Y.

Wanting to work closer to home, Robertson vied with three conductors for the directorship of the Inland Empire Symphony and was hired earlier this year.

Robertson’s two-year contract calls for him to spend a minimum of 80 days each season with the orchestra, and also to participate in The Sinfonia Mexicana, a cultural exchange program presented under the aegis of the Inland Empire Symphony Assn. Designed to lure Latinos who comprise more than 21% of the population of San Bernardino and Riverside counties to the concert hall with performances of classical music by Mexican composers, the program is hailed by the California Arts Council, which has awarded the orchestra an organizational grant of $7,020 for 1989-90.

“They have made a real effort to respond to the needs of the community,” said Elliot Klein, the council’s music administrator for organizational grants. “Appealing to Latinos makes a great deal of sense for the future of this orchestra. That group is their potential future audience.”

The Inland Empire Symphony has an operating budget for 1989-90 of $525,000; $325,000 to be spent on artistic personnel. With 53% of income earned through subscriptions and ticket sales, additional funding has come from private foundations, as well as $50,000 granted by the City of San Bernardino, and $20,000 from San Bernardino County. (The city has awarded an additional $15,000 to the Sinfonia Mexicana, and $10,000 for the Inland Empire Opera, also under the auspices of the Inland Empire Symphony Assn.)

To expand the Inland Empire Symphony’s subscription base of 1,400, and increase its visibility in the community, Robertson will present informal lunchtime concerts in downtown San Bernardino and perform “provocative” repertory at local academic institutions, in addition to conducting at the 1,700-seat California Theatre of Performing Arts. He plans to program “standard classics,” plowing his way through the cycles of Beethoven and Brahms symphonies, and later add a mix of contemporary music and neglected works, such as the Second Symphony of Edward Elgar, and symphonies by Michael Tippett and Scandinavian John Svendsen.

“My approach in the past has been to choose contemporary music that is more immediately palatable,” Robertson said, recalling that in his early days in Santa Fe he programmed Francis Poulenc’s “Sinfonia” to much success. “I am not planning to flood our audience with contemporary works. I think one of the secrets of programming is to mix and match familiar and unfamiliar elements.”

Extensively involved in music education programs both in Europe and the United States, Scottish-born Robertson also will help oversee the Inland Empire Symphony Assn.’s successful Music in the Schools program.

Having spearheaded educational efforts for the San Jose and Oakland symphonies, as well as opera programs for youth at the Scottish Opera and Glimmerglass Opera, Robertson eschews highly structured programs traditionally offered in classrooms. Rather, he expects to take smaller ensembles into schools and universities and art galleries and tantalize young audiences with adventuresome fare.

“I’m interested in giving youngsters a motivational experience. We need to let kids know that classical music is fun and exciting and can be a real emotional experience.”

Teacher, motivator, performer. That’s how Robertson characterizes the evolving role of today’s orchestral musician.

“No longer do 75 musicians in a symphony orchestra just play as a unit 100 feet away from the audience,” Robertson explained. “The good ones are becoming flexible. The orchestra as we know it is not dying. It’s just changing.”