The well-tempered maestro
After years in the musical spotlight, Jorge Mester's career has led him to Naples and a near-perfect fit with an orchestra that he calls "a well-kept secret."
By JOHN FLEMING
Published March 20, 2005
NAPLES, Fla. - Conductor Jorge Mester didn't expect to find a very good orchestra in a small city in Southwest Florida.
"They're a well-kept secret," Mester said of the Naples Philharmonic Orchestra. "A lot of people don't even know there's an orchestra here."
Mester, who came to prominence as music director of the Louisville Orchestra in the 1960s, has been a symphonic music fixture for a long time. He headed the conducting program at the Juilliard School, was artistic director of the Aspen Music Festival for 21 years and has been music director of the Pasadena Symphony Orchestra in California since 1984.
He first appeared as a guest conductor in Naples two years ago, when the Philharmonic was searching for a new music director, and he didn't think he would be interested in the job until he got there.
Among the things that changed his mind was the orchestra's performance of the Tchaikovsky Fifth Symphony under him. "I thought, man, these guys are flexible," Mester said. "Sometimes the rubatos in the second movement of the Tchaikovsky give orchestras trouble, and they had no problem."
The Philharmonic players, for their part, didn't have great expectations of Mester, either, until he took the podium. "We were all shocked," concertmaster Glenn Basham said. "He kind of came through the back door. The concert just took the roof off. He won a lot of people over."
Myra Janco Daniels was the most important person to be won over. Daniels is CEO of the Philharmonic Center for the Arts, where the orchestra performs and has priority over other programming. That policy was established by Daniels, who founded the center and has run it for all 16 years of its existence.
Daniels was somewhat surprised when she decided on Mester, who turns 70 in April. He is much older than other conductors who were in the running, such as Michael Stern, Kenneth Jean and Daniel Hege.
"Frankly, I was looking for a younger man with experience, but you don't find Jorge's experience in a younger man," Daniels said.
So the Philharmonic shortcircuited its search process and decided on Mester as its new music director, even though one candidate hadn't yet conducted the orchestra.
Mester (whose first name is pronounced "George") is now in the middle of his first season as music director, and on a Saturday morning in February, he took an hour in his hotel room to meet with me. A dapper man of Hungarian and Mexican descent, he was almost diffident in demeanor, with a Spanish lilt to his speech as he enthused over the previous night's concert, anchored by the Brahms Third Symphony.
Many times, I said, the Brahms can be ponderous and serious, but under him the performance had been light and dancelike.
"It's a muscular piece, and people like to put chocolate sauce on it, but there's no reason why it shouldn't be played with vigor," Mester said.
I had brought with me about a dozen CDs by the Louisville Orchestra, reissues on the First Edition label that were part of a remarkable project in which the orchestra had recorded hundreds of new works, under music director Robert Whitney and his successors. It was a legendary achievement in the history of 20th century music.
As music director in Louisville from 1967 to 1979, Mester made 72 recordings, and he flipped through the ones I had with him conducting works by composers such as Frank Martin, Peter Mennin, William Schuman, Karel Husa, Ned Rorem, Darius Milhaud and more.
But instead of waxing nostalgic, he mainly seemed to remember the difficulties of his time in Louisville.
"Rob Whitney had been there 40 years," he said. "And here I was, this young, sexy guy, jet-setting here and there. So they thought I was the cat's meow. For the first two years I was able to program the music I was going to record, but eventually ticket sales started to go kaput. Nobody in Louisville bought those records."
Today, the Louisville Orchestra is struggling, having flirted with bankruptcy in 2003, and its commitment to new music is long gone. Mester has not been back there in years, and he sounded soured on the experience. Asked for his verdict on the significance of the Louisville recordings, he would only say, "It was right for its time."
In Naples, Mester follows Christopher Seaman, the music director for 11 years. Orchestra members seem to be enjoying the transition to a new leader.
"They're both good in different ways," said Kristen Sonneborn, the principal bassoon. "Christopher was extremely talented at the mechanics of putting a concert together. Everything was very precise and controlled. With Mester, he's much more open to letting things happen. Oftentimes each night is a little bit different, so that's kind of exciting."
Seaman's programming was heavy on the tried and true of Beethoven, Brahms and Tchaikovsky, as well as music from his native Great Britain. Daniels clearly wants the new maestro to shake things up a little.
"The orchestra needs new," she said. "The audience needs new, whether they know it or not. And Jorge needs it for his soul, too. He needs to conduct what he loves."
Mester has proceeded cautiously with programming so far, though he did make something of a statement on his opening subscription program by including Witold Lutoslawski's gripping Concerto for Orchestra, unfamiliar to most listeners, along with works of Rachmaninoff and Dvorak. In April, he leads Shostakovich's Eighth Symphony, a first for the Philharmonic.
"I'm not out to change the world," he said. "For me, programming is meant to seduce an audience and not to force them to like what I like."
The Philharmonic has a loyal audience. Each concert in the classical subscription series (six programs played three or four times) draws at least 80 percent of capacity in the 1,436-seat hall, according to Daniels, who attends virtually every performance and is not shy about advising her music director on programming.
"I don't want to rule the artistic. That's his job. But if he's going down a dark alley, I'm sure as hell going to throw a light on it," she said.
Mester doesn't have a problem with Daniels' blunt management style. "She's a visionary who gets things done," he said. "I'm lucky to be able to work with her."
Nobody in Naples would dream of questioning Daniels, who once had an advertising agency in Chicago. Almost singlehandedly, she built the Philharmonic Center into a role model for the arts, adding the Naples Museum of Art in 2000.
Primarily because of the center, Naples is cited in a new book, The 100 Best Art Towns in America by John Villani.
"What I tell this community is that we make your real estate more valuable," Daniels said. "What we do is feed your soul. Without us, Naples would have a pretty tough time."
A onetime percussionist, Daniels is fiercely protective of the orchestra. "I love the orchestra. It's the big love of my life," she said.
At a time when many symphony orchestras are foundering, the Naples Philharmonic is doing well. With a budget of $6.7-million, it operates in the black, and the 49 full-time musicians are paid a base salary of $39,700 over a 39-week season. (The Florida Orchestra, with 80 full-time players, has a base salary of $25,120 over a 32-week season.) The Philharmonic hires other musicians on a per-service basis to fill out the size of the orchestra.
The Naples orchestra does play a lot of pops concerts, as many as seven performances of each program (the Florida Orchestra plays each pops program three times). A diet of unimaginative arrangements of Broadway tunes, movie scores and pop music can wear on musicians, but it has helped make the Philharmonic financially stable.
"It's very difficult, but we understand the importance of it from the financial aspect," timpanist John Evans said. Five years ago, the orchestra hired out to play on a tour of Florida arenas with crossover opera star Andrea Bocelli.
People from outside Naples may have been surprised when the Philharmonic named a music director of Mester's age. But as an affluent resort and retirement community, the city is accustomed to having older people in charge of things. Daniels herself turns 80 in June, and she figures Mester could have a relatively long tenure.
"Jorge, I think, is a young old man," she said. "In numbers, not young, but in mind and body and soul, very young."
Mester, who divides his time between Naples and Pasadena, Calif., naturally concurs. "The day I retire, they should put me in a box," he told me that morning.
He thinks conductors improve with age. "I've gotten better. I think I'm much better now because I'm freer. I'm not worried anymore. I think people get better as they age because they have less to prove. So you can tap into a different part of your brain when you're performing."
Now that the music directorship has been taken care of for at least the next few years, a larger and more challenging opening looms at the center. Daniels recently bought a condo on Lake Shore Drive in downtown Chicago, and looks forward to spending time there. She wants to hand over the reins in Naples, but nobody is in line to succeed her.
"I have a plan," she said. "I don't have all the pieces in it. I need a person whom I feel, and the board feels, can run it, and I don't have that yet."
Daniels is looking for someone with the same passion for the work that she has.
"You've got to find the right people who love it maybe half as much as I do," she said. "It can't be just a job for them. They have to have vision, vision, vision. And they can't be afraid to dirty their hands at anything - I can pull up that (stage) curtain if I have to.
"I think the hardest thing about this business is finding the right people, and trusting them."
- John Fleming can be reached at 727 893-8716 or fleming@sptimes.com