Vollmer to Run L.A. Orchestra : Music: The executive director of the O.C. Philharmonic Society will leave to assume that role for Los Angeles Chamber.

Erich Vollmer, executive director of the Orange County Philharmonic Society--the oldest presenter of classical music in the county--will be leaving the prestigious organization to become executive director of the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra.

He will succeed Deborah Rutter, who resigned last November to take a position in Seattle. The date of his departure is not definite, according to board President Steven Lupinacci, and will be discussed among related items at the next meeting of the board on Jan. 25.

“At this point, I just want to inform you that he is leaving and going to LACO,” Lupinacci said Sunday. “We’re disappointed to see him go because of the great things he’s done. But we wish him well in his new job.”

A native of Orange, Vollmer joined the Philharmonic Society in 1984, succeeding Robert Elias, who himself moved on to the top administrative job with the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra. Formerly, Vollmer had been chief administrator with the Young Musicians Foundation in Los Angeles and had also served in various arts administrative posts at USC, where he had earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees in music.

Vollmer oversaw a spectacular rise in the Society’s operating budget from about $750,000 his first year to a high of $2.5 million in 1992, and performance offerings that more than doubled, from about 12 in 1985 to a high of about 25 in the 1989-90 season.

He increased the number of series offered to subscribers and introduced some non-traditional classical programming such as the Andreyev Balalaika Orchestra and a Christmas concert by the Chieftains, both in 1991, and the Ballet Folklorico de Mexico, which turned hundreds away from a sold-out house last year.

Less successfully, he also helped launch the ambitious but financially disastrous New World Symphony Festival in 1988. Co-sponsored with the Orange County Performing Arts Center and UC Irvine, the three-week summer venture that brought the Florida-based orchestra to the county cost the Society about $300,000 more than ticket sales brought in. The loss contributed to a $300,000 accumulated deficit, which was finally cut by more than half in July of 1992, to about $110,000.

The Philharmonic Society was founded in 1954 to present concerts by the Orange County Philharmonic Orchestra, created and led by Frieda Belinfante, an internationally known conductor. But in 1962 the organization radically shifted direction--receiving some criticism for doing so--by deciding to import the Los Angeles Philharmonic and other groups, instead of nurturing a home-grown symphony. The Orange County Philharmonic subsequently went out of business.

However, since the shift, the Society has regularly brought orchestras, conductors and soloists of international stature to the county, including the Berlin Philharmonic, Royal Concertgebauw of Amsterdam and the Chicago Symphony.

The Society presents virtually all symphonic activity at the Orange County Performing Arts Center, other than the Pacific Symphony concerts there. The organization also sponsors recitals and various dance events at the center, and presents educational programs there and in local schools to about 300,000 Orange County high school and younger students annually.

In 1991, the Society expanded its activities by beginning a joint venture with the Laguna Chamber Music Society to present a chamber music series at the Irvine Barclay Theatre. That series continues to near sellout houses.

However, faced with mounting financial pressures, the Society also began exploratory talks in 1991 regarding a merger with the Pacific Symphony. But that proposal sank under a wave of internal and public criticism that one organization would inevitably swallow up the other and that fund raising for a new, single organization would not be as effective as hoped.