Tuning Up for the Future : Music: Yoav Talmi starts second season as director of the San Diego Symphony with plans for improvement and respect for players’ skills.

With worries about settling a new contract between players and management behind him, San Diego Symphony Music Director Yoav Talmi can devote all his attention to his primary concern: the orchestra’s musical development.

When he leads the symphony in tonight’s season-opening concert of Beethoven and Chopin, it will mark his second year as music director. In an interview last weekend, the Israeli maestro discussed his vision for the symphony, beginning with kudos for the orchestra’s overall musical progress last season.

“I was more surprised than anyone else--it showed that the orchestra adapted very quickly,” Talmi said. “The enormous progress we have made with the strings, for example, gives me much pleasure.”

This season Talmi is eager to bring the rest of the orchestra up to the acknowledged strength of the symphony brass players.

“I don’t want anyone to say, ‘San Diego, yes, wonderful brass!’ I want to make sure that the string sections and the woodwind sections will be on the same level as the brass section.”

If Talmi has his way, the San Diego Symphony will eventually sport a decidedly European sonority.

“I like a European, somewhat Viennese sound, which is never too sharp of an attack, never coarse--a sound that is always mild, round and rich. Typically, when I ask the players to give a fuller sound, it just becomes louder. But I don’t want louder--I want it fuller, richer. It takes a while to get, say, a Concertgebouw horn section sound, a string sound with a rich tone full of nuances.”

According to Talmi, the orchestra he inherited displayed a high sense of discipline and quick response, traits he attributed to the work of his predecessor, David Atherton.

“I was surprised when I asked for a pianissimo ,” Talmi said. “I got the softest pianissimo possible, except that some of these soft sounds were without any life. It was a scared pianissimo --it was as if people were literally scared.”

Talmi’s standard for a shimmering pianissimo sound is not just an imaginary ideal, but is based on his experience conducting the Berlin Philharmonic.

‘I conducted the Dvorak ‘New World’ symphony. With only a few hours to rehearse, I jumped in to replace Carlos Kleiber, who was ill. The Philharmonic musicians played incredibly softly, yet you could hear it vibrating in the last row of the concert hall.”

Some changes in the orchestra’s profile, however, are beyond the conductor’s power. He would like to hire more string players, but finances are too tight to countenance that wish. With a roster of 81 players, the San Diego Symphony is about 20 shy of the typical size of a front-rank American symphony orchestra. The conductor has also had his heart set on touring with the symphony, but the same financial restraints make that objective a pipe dream.

Talmi is relying on the orchestra’s serious recordings to spread the good word. Over the summer, he finished the final editing of the symphony’s first Telarc compact disc recording, Reinhold Gliere’s “Third Symphony,” which should be available Oct. 10, the second week of the season.

“I trust this recording will add to the name of the orchestra, since no one outside the Los Angeles-San Diego area knows what this symphony is about,” Talmi said. “It should open their eyes and ears.”

The high point of the fall season will be the orchestra’s Mozart marathon Dec. 6-7, a four-hour all-Mozart performance that will culminate in Mozart’s final opus, the “Requiem.” As Talmi conceived the event, the marathon should be more of a musical smorgasbord to be sampled than an endurance contest for fans of the composer.

“It’s not a formal concert from the beginning to the end. People should come and hear as much as they like, then go and have coffee, a snack or dinner,” he said. “The music will continue. You lose some of it, but you can choose what you want to hear and where to rest. By entering into such an event, the audience will slowly enter into the realm of Mozart.”

Understanding the need to be the orchestra’s primary public spokesman, Talmi has resolved to spend more time in the area this season and make himself better known to San Diegans. This cannot be the easiest task for the quiet, rather scholarly musician, but there is no mistaking his resolve.

“I want to do whatever is possible so that I will be more involved with the community,” Talmi said.

This Monday at 7:30 p.m., for example, he will give a talk and answer questions at the La Jolla Athenaeum arts library. He has also decided to expand on his penchant to give occasional program notes from the podium, especially to increase audience appreciation of Bruckner symphonies, one of his special causes. Next month, when Talmi conducts the Bruckner Ninth Symphony, he will prepare the audience from the podium.

“Once we finish the Mozart Piano Concerto, I will ask the public to stay with us 15 to 20 minutes before the intermission,” he said. “I will speak to them about the symphony, providing demonstrations from the orchestra. Then we will return from intermission and hear the complete symphony uninterrupted.”

Talmi acknowledged that being a champion of Bruckner and programming one of his symphonies every season has not endeared him to some critics and audience members who find the music long-winded and unrewarding.

“The Bruckner cycle is a great love of mine as well as a great conviction that I’m really doing a mission,” Talmi said. “Hopefully, it’s not a mission impossible.”

Highlights of New Season

* Oct. 18-20. Music director Yoav Talmi pairs Mahler’s tuneful, affirming Symphony No. 4 with Richard Strauss’ brooding, autumnal “Four Last Songs,” Soprano Georgine Resick sings the soprano solos in each work.

* Oct.24-25. Robert Shaw, dean of American choral conductors and the San Diego Symphony’s principal guest conductor, leads the orchestra and San Diego Master Choral in Beethoven’s grand sacred opus, the “Missa Solemnis” in D Major.

* Dec. 6-7. Talmi’s four-hour Mozart marathon, a program that embraces the E-flat Horn Concerto, the Bassoon Concerto, and Symphony No. 29, culminates in the “Jupiter” Symphony and the “Requiem.” Who could ask for anything more?

* Feb. 13, 15. Popular contemporary American composer John Corigliano’s works have been too long absent from local symphony programming. Pianist James Tocco will make some amends for this oversight when he brings Corigliano’s Piano Concerto to a program that includes three tone poems from Smetana’s “Ma Vlast.” Grzegorz Nowak is the guest conductor.

* March 19-20. Up-and-coming violin virtuoso Gil Shaham makes his symphony debut with the Violin Concerto by Eric Korngold, the Wunderkind Austrian composer who sold his soul to Hollywood. Talmi conducts the program, which includes Beethoven’s Fourth Symphony and Bartok’s infrequently performed “Music for Strings, Percussion and Celesta,” one of the classics of 20th-Century music.

* May 7-8. Soviet Georgian conductor Jansoug Kakhidze, a favorite on the local podium since his first visit during the 1989 San Diego Soviet Arts Festival, returns to conduct the Dvorak Sixth Symphony and contemporary Russian composer Rodion Shchedrin’s tone poem “Ozarnie Chastushki.”

* May 15-17. Talmi closes the season with the Brahms Second Symphony and, for the first time on a subscription series, pianist Kevin Kenner playing the Beethoven Piano Concerto No. 4. Coronado native Kenner has won a slew of international contests, including the Chopin Competition in Warsaw.