Symphony to Tackle New Work : Music: San Diego’s 1992-93 lineup will include four world premieres and a festival of French music.

As San Diego Symphony music director Yoav Talmi prepares tolaunch the new season tonight at Copley Symphony Hall, he finds himself in a classic good news-bad news scenario.

The good news is that the maestro’s contract, which would have ended at the close of the 1992-93 season, has been extended through 1994.

The bad news is there will be no television coverage of the orchestra’s Oct. 12 Yucatan concert in Chichen Itza. One of the primary reasons for making the Mexican excursion was to gain exposure from a live broadcast throughout Mexico by Televisa, the Mexican television conglomerate, and a possible delayed broadcast to U.S. markets.

“At the last minute, the Pope canceled his visit to (that part of Mexico),” Talmi said in an interview this week at symphony hall. “The Pope was supposed to visit a few days before, and because of that the whole crew of Televisa was supposed to be there and then use the opportunity to televise us. They withdrew, and there is no TV now. But we committed ourselves, and we don’t want to be the side to back out because there is no TV.”

The Yucatan excursion, however, is only one of the unusual features of the new season. Talmi characterized this season’s programming as the most adventurous he has undertaken in San Diego. The lineup for 1992-93 will include four world premieres and a festival of French music patterned on last season’s successful Mozart festival.

But the usually optimistic music director is uneasy. Symphony audiences are notoriously skittish about hearing new music, which this season will include Pulitzer Prize-winning composer Roger Reynolds’ “Dreaming” (Dec. 11-13) and Tyzen Hsiao’s Violin Concerto with Cho-Liang Lin (Nov. 13-15). And the two-week French festival in May will not have the benefit of the international Mozart bicentennial hoopla that aided last December’s Mozart marathon.

“We will need to see at the end of the season whether we have jumped too far and will have to pay the price for our daring,” Talmi said. “Or, if indeed it was the right direction.”

Talmi has expressed confidence in the capacity of his audience to accept the unfamiliar. He remains undaunted in his march through the cycle of Bruckner and Mahler symphonies he started his first year as music director.

“People warned me that Bruckner would not go here--the public is too conservative and would be bored with that,” he said. “Up to now, every Bruckner symphony that we performed here was received enormously well. Admittedly, I would have loved to see 1,000 more people come to these concerts. But I think that by now we have started to establish a Mahler-Bruckner club.”

Talmi this year will conduct Bruckner’s Third Symphony (Oct. 23-25) and Mahler’s symphonic song-cycle “Das Lied von der Erde” (Dec. 3-4).

Tonight’s season-opening offerings include Richard Strauss’ tone poem “Don Juan” and Carl Orff’s earthy secular cantata “Carmina Burana,” with the San Diego Master Chorale, the La Jolla Symphony Chorus and the Choristers of the Cathedral Church of St. Paul.

Later in the season, Talmi will conduct for the first time locally one of his own compositions, his Overture on Mexican Themes. The overture is an early work, based on two Mexican folk songs Talmi heard when he and an ensemble of fellow Juilliard students performed at the Casals Festival in Puerto Rico. It was commissioned by the Louisville Symphony in 1969, when Talmi was the Kentucky orchestra’s associate conductor and pianist, his first position after completing his conservatory studies.

Although Talmi has not chosen to program his own work as a composer since he started conducting the orchestra in 1988, he claims that not having time to compose is one of his major frustrations.

“My wife will tell you that, more than anything, what I would want to do is to take a sabbatical for one full year without conducting a single concert, to just to sit and compose,” he said. “It’s burning in me. I arrange all kinds of things, but I really want to write music.”

Talmi acknowledged that such a retreat from conducting is unlikely, especially since his conducting schedule for the next year will be his busiest ever. He has even cut back his conducting engagements in his native Israel, where he lives with his family and has been an active part of the music scene since his tenure as music director of the Israeli Chamber Orchestra from 1984-88.

“When I used to conduct with the Israeli Chamber Orchestra, I would give some 12 different programs every year in Tel Aviv. Since now I have more work than I can take in Europe, I prefer to do less in Israel. Twice a season in Israel is enough for me. My wife is very happy for that, because it means that when I come home to Israel, I am at home with the family.”

* The San Diego Symphony, La Jolla Symphony Chorus and St. Paul Choristers under symphony music director Yoav Talmi perform Carl Orff’s “Carmina Burana” as well as Copland’s “Fanfare for the Common Man” and Richard Strass’ “Don Juan.” At Copley Symphony Hall today through Sunday. For ticket information call 699-4205.