The New Conductors: Challenges in San Diego, Inland Empire : Talmi Seeks to Bring Back the Audiences

Yoav Talmi frankly admits that his new post as music director-designate of the San Diego Symphony puts him on the podium of an organization that has been through major problems in recent years. (The orchestra missed a season and a half a few years ago because it went over budget.) But he believes that much of the rebuilding has now been done, thanks to the executive director Wesley Brustad and the board of directors.

“My main challenge will be to attract larger audiences,” the Israeli conductor said during an interview in his suburban Tel Aviv home, a bright and airy plant-filled two-story house where lately he has been staying only briefly between guest-conducting assignments. These take him across Europe, around the United States and as far afield as New Zealand before he comes to San Diego for the season opening Oct. 13.

Although Talmi will not assume the post of music director until the 1990-1991 season, he speaks confidently and enthusiastically about formulating plans to invigorate San Diego’s music scene.

The need to draw larger audiences to San Diego’s Symphony Hall tops Talmi’s list of challenges. He will be combating what he terms one of the greatest problems facing American orchestras today--declining audiences.

“We don’t know exactly why, but Americans have been going to concerts less in the past three, four years,” he said. “We have to find a modus vivendi to convince people to go to one or two concerts a month. It’s a necessity, not a luxury.”

It will be an uphill battle. “Some people think that all they need is the television,” he lamented. He plans to reach would-be couch potatoes on their own turf by using television interviews to spread the message that “you need concerts for your soul and your well-being.”

Efforts to increase audiences will extend to young music lovers-in-training. The San Diego Symphony has an established program of outreach to local schools, and Talmi intends to take a personal hand in bolstering it.

He has a long record of educational outreach; his first post after graduating from Juilliard was assistant music director of the Louisville Orchestra, where in 1968 his main task was education and outreach to youth. He reported that his biggest success with the Israel Chamber Orchestra was a series of family concerts that incorporated brief narrative explanations about each composition in the program.

He will not be able to effect much change in the coming season because he will conduct only three programs (two in October and one to end the season, in late May). But that doesn’t deter him.

“We also must start touring, and our touring must begin in Los Angeles,” he said. Former music director David Atherton brought the group to the Hollywood Bowl, but Talmi wants to conduct a serious indoor concert. “I want to see how the public and the critics react,” he said.

He noted that the San Diego Symphony has never recorded. Talmi has extensive recording experience with the Israel Chamber Orchestra, where he was music director until 1988, and with European orchestras. He says he is already negotiating a first recording contract for San Diego Symphony.

Fund-raising responsibilities pose a major new challenge for the 46-year-old conductor--one that he would have preferred to avoid. “I was hired to bring the artistic level of the orchestra as high as possible, not to collect money,” he said. “I need all of my time to study scores and make music.”

Nevertheless, he understands the need for fund raising, and he seems determined to do his part. He plans to become very involved in San Diego public life--especially after he and his family take up full-time residence there in two years.

His personal tastes run the gamut from Beethoven and Brahms to Ravel, Mozart, Baroque opera and contemporary music. These favorites will figure in his choice of concerts, but he also plans to promote new music.

“I see it as my duty to produce and perform contemporary American works each season,” he said earnestly, adding that he hopes to commission new works for premieres in San Diego.

Talmi acknowledged, however, that American audiences resist efforts to perform new music and that reliance on the public for financial support makes it difficult to focus too much attention on material that does not generate heavy public interest.

“The San Diego public is very conservative,” he noted, “but if we plan it right, we should be able to play American music.”