Directors Now Sell Orchestras They Conduct : Symphony: San Diego’s Yoav Talmi is no exception to the rule that has directors eliciting money as well as music.

When the New York Philharmonic launched a fund-raising radio telethon recently, music director Zubin Mehta was there, using his pitch-making talents to elicit a mighty noise from a bank of telephones poised to field incoming donations.

When the St. Louis Symphony was courting a major contributor recently, music director Leonard Slatkin personally asked for a $9-million donation.

And when the Irvine-based Pacific Symphony marches through the Orange County community to drum up financial and moral support in the months and years ahead, the job of drum major will belong to newly appointed music director Carl St. Clair.

If you still think of a music director as simply a conductor who has a steady job, you’re living in the past. In addition to musician and administrator, the modern American music director also is expected to be chief cheerleader at fund-raisers, community gatherings and society soirees.

“It’s all very lofty to believe that music sells itself but it doesn’t,” says Slatkin, who has a reputation as one of the most active and sociable music directors. “You have to do something if you want an orchestra to grow.”

“They definitely have a role to play in this day and age in our country,” said Wesley O. Brustad, executive director of the San Diego Symphony, adding that music director Yoav Talmi pitches in “primarily in fund-raising and very selectively.”

“We live by our contributions,” Brustad said, “But I wouldn’t say he’s out glad-handing everybody in town.”

“It’s very American, and something that most conductors accept as part of the territory,” says Jenny Vogel, vice president of ICM Talent Inc., a management and booking agency that represents dozens of conductors.

“A lot of Europeans,” she adds, “don’t like socializing, partying, talking money or talking nice to people who might give them money. It’s not part of their background.”

San Diego’s Talmi, who is Israeli, is a perfect example. His first American assignment was as an associate conductor for the Louisville Symphony from 1968-1970, before fund raising became very sophisticated. Talmi then returned to Europe, where he has held positions in Holland, Germany and Israel.

“I have done very little fund raising because most of the positions I’ve had up to now were in countries where the orchestras are fully subsidized by the government,” Talmi said. “Fund raising was done just to enhance very special projects like touring. I have accepted the fact that the American system is totally different and that part of the music director’s job is to help in this department. But I couldn’t agree more that it has to be done to a degree that it doesn’t distract from the artistic effort.”

But in the United States, orchestras depend evermore on private support: A proposed 2.2% increase (to $15.9 million) in the 1990 National Endowment for the Arts allocation to music organizations--of which orchestras are just one component--is the first increase of any kind in the last decade, according to Toby Halliday, director of legislative affairs at the Washington-based American Symphony Orchestra League.

That means that orchestra officials must look for every tool available to dig out precious unearned income, and those tools definitely include the music director’s ability to charm.

“People expect a music director to be a figurehead, to have a personality and to stand out from everybody else in the community,” Vogel said. “With all the marketing and advertising that is done, the way orchestras are sold today (is) very much consumer-oriented.”

A long time ago, in a musical galaxy far, far away, an orchestra’s music director was the person who decided what music the group would play, who led rehearsals presumably until that music was ready for public presentation, who perhaps selected guest soloists and who then took the bows and bouquets after the concert’s finale.

He--for it virtually always was a man--may have ranked among the lower invertebrates on the evolutionary scale of social graces, but such shortcomings were considered par for the Old World course.

This style may best have been personified by Hungarian-born conductor George Szell, who was renowned for his fiery, near-dictatorial command of the Cleveland Orchestra. He led the group to greatness during his 24-year tenure as music director, but that was a result of his Brobdingnagian musical skills, not from any efforts at wooing donors.

Today, the prune-faced authoritarian music director of yore has largely been displaced by a smiling fellow--yes, it’s still mostly a man’s world--who is expected to combine the leadership of Gandhi, the likability of Mr. Rogers and the salesmanship of Cal Worthington.

“I do more than probably a lot of people would do,” says Slatkin, noting parenthetically that his big-league pitch for $9 million brought in a donation of $1 million, which was $500,000 more than the orchestra’s development director expected from the donor. “I’ve gone to a lot of events, but never did I think of them as anything except as helping to build our endowment and doing things we need to do to help the orchestra.

“During last season we opened one of the rooms in the concert hall as a place for patrons to meet. In a way, that’s kind of elitist and goes against what I believe music should be. Then again, we need to cultivate those sources of money.”

San Diego’s Brustad, too, cautioned against too much of a good thing: “Yes, we use our music director (in fund-raising efforts), but I think an executive director has to play more of a role in that regard. That person has to be out in the community working with people as well. If you dilute the music director’s time too much with those things, you may dilute artistic product.”

Call it the Leonard Bernstein Syndrome. But since Berstein etched the archetype in the ‘50s and ‘60s through regular television appearances with the New York Philharmonic Young People’s Concerts, America has expected their orchestra leaders to be similarly personable, articulate and charming.

“There’s no question about it, that’s why Bernstein has been so successfully received,” said Donald Thulean, director of orchestra services for the League. “On the other hand, some people started thinking a conductor had to be a Bernstein to be successful and, of course, there’s only one Bernstein.”

The hard truth of modern-day musical Darwinism may be that only the suave survive.

“There’s no question in my mind that George Szell could not make music (today) the way he did before,” says Deborah Rutter, executive director of the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra, whose music director, Iona Brown, is known to rub elbows with the best of them at important fund-raising events. “The community of musicians and the community of audiences is a completely different universe than it was then--100%.”

Some would disagree with that assessment, arguing that talent, no matter what face it presents, will out. But it would have to be an extraordinary talent.

“You could stand (a non-social conductor) if the product he created was such that nobody could equal it,” says Preston Stedman, a Pacific Symphony board member and head of the search committee that chose St. Clair. “He could be a reincarnation of the devil, but if he did such a beautiful job on the podium, you’d say ‘OK, that’s it.’ ”

Rutter quickly cautions that no amount of socializing skill will substitute for competence on the podium. Still, as Vogel says, if a music director doesn’t like to deal with social obligations, “it can be a real problem. One of the things that brought down (former Vancouver Symphony music director Rudolf) Barshai is that he hated doing it, refused to do it and alienated many people in the community.”

Romanian-born conductor Sergiu Comissiona was appointed in February as Vancouver’s new music director, replacing the Russian-born Barshai, who left the post in 1988 after failing, by most accounts, to establish a connection with audiences.

“He didn’t do a lot of that (community relations) side of the job--he was more concerned with the musical issues,” says Vancouver promotions manager Muriel Schubert. “In our search for a new music director,” adds Diane Hoar, the orchestra’s chief executive officer, “the search committee was very conscious of . . . an expectation our community has that our music director will be involved in the community as well as with the orchestra.”

Most orchestra officials suggest that anyone with Szell-like talent probably wouldn’t be turned down for a job. Yet, they unanimously stress the blessings of finding a musically qualified conductor who also is willing to dive into promotional activities.

“If Herbert Blomstedt said to us tomorrow, ‘I will do no more administrative tasks whatsoever; I won’t go to receptions, I won’t go to board meetings,’ we’d still want him to be our music director because we think he’s a great musician and a great music director. But we would lose something,” says Peter Pastreich, executive director of the San Francisco Symphony, adding that Blomstedt has played a direct and significant role in getting a number of major donations to the orchestra.

The Denver Symphony Assn. is in the unenviable position of having no orchestra, much less a music director. The previous director, Philippe Entremont, resigned in 1989 in frustration over budget cuts instituted by the board in an unsuccessful effort to keep the debt-plagued orchestra afloat.

Michael Maxwell, executive director of the symphony association that currently is trying to negotiate a reunion with musicians who seceded over money problems, said: “I would venture to say that if the Denver Symphony Orchestra had had at the time a strong music director--somebody of international renown, living here and far more identified with the fortunes of the orchestra--some of the events of 1989 might not have happened.”

Yet it’s not simply a conductor’s willingness or lack of willingness to rally for money that executives prize most.

“The crucial thing is not so much the social component, but the commitment of the conductor to study the operation of the orchestra,” Pacific Symphony’s Stedman added. “(It is) finding out how he can spread the word, how he can move the orchestra forward.”

Indeed, most officials say that the most valuable sales pitch a music director can make is not one that is preceded by a dollar sign.

Baltimore Symphony music director David Zinman “is a great source of enthusiasm for the board,” said executive director John Gidwitz. “It is very helpful for him to articulate his vision of the orchestra’s mission to them.”

Said San Francisco’s Pastreich: “The most effective music director doesn’t just go see some donors and come to a few board meetings, but shows in every rehearsal how he deals with problems--whether he faces them or turns away from them.

“It’s like if your visiting somebody’s house and you see something that’s broken--you don’t fix it because it’s not your house,” Pastreich said. “If it is your house, either you have to fix it or you’ve got to get it fixed. I think the great music directors are the people who recognize that this is their house.”