The new music director of the Portland Symphony Orchestra sits down with Mainebiz to talk about the city’s music scene, the business aspects of his job, and Elvis.
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Eckart Preu succeeded Robert Moody this year as music director of the Portland Symphony Orchestra, a nonprofit organization with a $3.3 million annual operating budget.
The German native sat down with Mainebiz at Merrill Auditorium for an interview that’s excerpted below.
Mainebiz: What was Portland’s appeal for you?
Eckart Preu: I conducted in Portland a couple of years ago, and I found it to be a wonderful orchestra — very responsive, high-quality, and people that trust you [as a conductor]. I found that very appealing, and this is a wonderful venue.
MB: How much pressure is there to deliver an attention-grabbing first season?
EP: There’s always that pressure, particularly the first season. But I’ve learned that anything you do with an orchestra will take time, so it will not be that all of a sudden the orchestra will sound totally different. Having said that, of course it will be a stunning season.
MB: How can you bring in a younger, more diverse audience?
EP: If there were a million-dollar answer, we would be rich people. We offer a wide range of repertoire, even big classical pieces that older people might know. Then of course we have the different concert series.
MB: Do you leave the pops concerts to guest conductors?
EP: I’m planning on doing Elvis [“A Salute to Elvis”]. I grew up with Elvis on TV in East Germany, so I have a soft spot for him.
MB: And do you enjoy that as much as conducting Beethoven or Bach?
EP: It’s a totally different ballgame. I love it. You have one rehearsal, and then you go. It’s much more improvisational.
MB: Are pops concerts important to bringing in new concertgoers?
EP: It has proven not to work the way it was intended, so crossover is very rare. Usually people who love pops love pops, and people who love classical love classical.
MB: Unlike Europe where the arts are more heavily subsidized, here you’re more reliant on support from businesses and private donors. Do you have to work hard for that support?
EP: Totally! That’s why we have staff who specialize in that. We all help.
MB: Do you find more support for the arts in Portland than other cities?
EP: I don’t know that they’re naturally more inclined to support the arts, it may be more that the symphony and the arts community in general does a better job relating what they’re doing. I think there’s been a longtime support for the arts. If you as a symphony can be the pride of the city and the state, then the people who are community-oriented are much more prone to give. I kind of like the American model because it requires you to engage with the audience in different ways. My brother is a conductor in Germany, and he never interacts with audience members. I like the fact that here, every musician on stage is aware of where the money is coming from. Everybody works on not only creating but also keeping friendships.
MB: Do you like the business aspects of your job?
EP: I actually do. It’s like instead of just painting, you do the canvas yourself, you mix the colors, and if you have really good people in the office to work with, it’s a lot of fun. I just get the applause at the end, but there are a lot of people in the background who make it all happen.
MB: How is recruiting musicians different for smaller orchestras?
EP: Everybody works with a union contract, with a bargaining agreement, and every contract very clearly outlines how people are to be hired.
MB: Why so many Portland Symphony Orchestra members from this region — Can you compete on salary with larger orchestras?
EP: You cannot survive on the salary that we pay, so people need to have other gigs. That’s why I think there are people based either in Maine or in Boston. They basically all have two or three jobs.
MB: Are blind auditions for orchestra members now standard practice?
EP: In Germany we don’t have blind auditions, which is a mistake because you do listen differently. I’m now a big proponent of not seeing at all, even in the final round, who it is.
