Pasadena Syumphony keys up for concert season.

Scene: Stage of the Pasadena Civic Auditorium, late in the evening of the first rehearsal for the 1989 season of the Pasadena Symphony.

Cast: Men and women, casually dressed and sprawled on folding chairs. Maestro, in a navy blue shirt hanging out of jeans, standing on a wooden platform.

Props: Violins, violas, cellos, French horns, trombones, trumpets, oboes, English horns, bassoons, clarinets, assorted drums, etc.

Action! Maestro jumps, springs, bounces on his platform. He waves his arms wildly. The instruments blend, creep, rise, crescendo. Midway, the Maestro speaks.

Or rather, clucks. “Cluck, cluck, cluck” he calls, and then, “More bass drum. Boomp, bomp, bomp, boomp.” At one point, to demonstrate how long a note should be held, he leans over, almost falling.

He asks the horns for more tongue. He sounds out what he wants with a throaty noise somewhere between a 2-year-old’s indigestion and a Bronx cheer.

He hops violently, waving, calling out critiques, asking musicians to play bars over. Occasionally, a musician apologizes for a miscue. More often, they whistle or call out jokes.

Is this any way to run a symphony?

“I’m working with the best musicians in the country,” Jorge Mester replies. “We can afford to be playful . . . You’re playing music, after all. It’s supposed to be fun. I think a lot of people forget that.”

Mester, 54, has been music director of the Pasadena Symphony for six years. He recently signed a contract extending his directorship to 1993.

Besides his work in Pasadena, he is director of the Aspen Music Festival and has been a guest conductor with orchestras all over the world. He has Hungarian parents, was born in Mexico and attended a U.S. military prep school. Though his wife moved to Switzerland three months ago, Mester has spent barely three weeks there. His permanent home, he says, is United Airlines.

Reached in Basel before the symphony’s second performance next Saturday, Mester talked about the season ahead, which in honor of the French Bicentennial has a distinctly Gallic flavor, and about working in Pasadena.

Pasadena is a lot of things. Rose Bowl, Rose Parade, Doo Dah parade. Craftsman architecture, Greene brothers. Old Town, new money. Lake Avenue high rises, slow-growth initiative. Little Old Lady From.

What it is not, is a major metropolis. But like a lot of small cities in Southern California, it supports a symphony, something that some much larger cities--New Orleans, for instance, and Denver--have not been able to do consistently.

Major credit for that goes to Pasadena’s location, in the entertainment capital of the world. Although many large city symphonies struggle to pay the bills--including living wages to musicians--Southern California is swimming in symphonies, chamber orchestras and other ensembles.

The result is that first-rate musicians, who can command top salaries in film and television, can indulge their passion for classical music at symphonies such as Pasadena’s.

Principal horn James Thatcher, for instance, recorded for the films “Indiana Jones,” “The Natural” and “Star Trek.” Concertmaster Paul Shure has been concertmaster for the Hollywood Bowl. Trumpet player Burnette Dillon has played with Della Reese and rock groups. Percussionist Dale Anderson has done “Ghost Busters” and the background music for NBC Network News.

“I was having lunch with my first trumpet last Saturday,” Mester said, “and he told me (the Pasadena Symphony) is his only chance to play symphonic music. . . . It means a lot to them. Very often it’s the only classical music they play.

“This is the only place in the United States other than New York, and the only place in the world other than New York and London, where you can do this.”

Mester thinks of these virtuoso musicians when he is designing the Pasadena season. He considers, too, his audience, which probably will want to hear a familiar repertoire. “I realized that the place that the Pasadena Symphony should be . . . was to present programs that were unique and would continue the tradition of the Pasadena Symphony as an innovative force in Southern California. It’s important to figure out what musical diet the audience would want to hear.”

But besides the enjoyment, there must be new discoveries for the audience, which is where the orchestra’s preferences come in. As Mester says, “I have to make sure they’re going to have fun and be challenged.

“We have to have a good balance between things that the audience feels familiar with and things that will stretch them a little bit.”