A LESSON FOR SAN DIEGO : DALLAS SYMPHONY ONCE PLAGUED BY SOUR NOTES

DALLAS —  The cities of San Diego and Dallas have much in common. Dallas is the seventh-largest city in the nation, San Diego the eighth. Both are boom centers of the Sun Belt. Both have experienced stunning growth in the past dozen years.

Both have had woeful problems with symphony orchestras.

At the moment, the San Diego Symphony is at a nadir; the Dallas Symphony Orchestra has never been better. Even so, in the words of an administrator for the Dallas contingent, San Diego ’87 is a “cruel replay” of Dallas ’74.

After almost collapsing 13 years ago--indeed, after being excoriated in the New York Times--the Dallas Symphony Orchestra has never been in better financial health, nor at a loftier artistic peak. It has a recording contract with a major label (Pro Arte), an internationally known conductor in Eduardo Mata and is building a $75-million concert hall. It has a $14-million endowment and toured Europe in 1985.

Those are huge strides from an episode which included a canceled season, a $1-million-plus debt and musicians suing for more than $500,000 in back pay while high-priced conductors never once missed a check.

What did Dallas do to turn things around? What lessons does its experience hold for San Diego?

“One person has to make it his crusade,” said Henry S. Miller Jr., a Dallas real estate magnate largely credited with saving the city’s symphony. “No one person can do it all, but it takes some one to take command. And really, it wasn’t all that hard.

“I hardly had anyone turn me down, either for a job of serving on the committee or helping to raise money or whatever. We got a lot of positive response. You just have to be organized.”

San Diegans hopeful of mirroring the Dallas success should take note that the turnaround took shape gradually, over a decade. An observer close to the scene said the Dallas symphony’s first phase was gaining control of its finances; second, its ability to market itself and gain a constituency, and third, seizing on both to improve artistically.

Dallas’ problems were remarkably similar to San Diego’s. A disorganized board. No ability to raise money. Major conductors in Max Rudolf and Georg Solti, now maestro of the Chicago Symphony, had left angrily. Credit at banks was nonexistent, reputation in the community at an ebb. Until Miller stepped in, no one had taken charge.

“If you fail to plan, you’re planning to fail,” said Leonard David Stone, the Canadian-born executive director of the Dallas Symphony. “There’s no evidence that the powers in San Diego have planned. They cannot have planned with the revolving door of management that they’ve had.

“It’s been an industry-wide joke: ‘Who’s managing San Diego this month?’ ”

Herbert J. Solomon, president of the board of directors of the San Diego Symphony, said he agreed with Stone’s criticisms.

“Yes, I agree if you fail to plan, you plan to fail,” Solomon said. “That’s been the story here. Planning is very important. It’s true San Diego has had too many managers. However, I’m pleased to say our current executive director (Wesley O. Brustad) is a man of considerable experience. He started in September, and I hired him.”

Solomon said he is hopeful of the San Diego Symphony resuming play “by the start of the next winter season--October of this year.” Still, he concedes massive problems. He was asked if he could be Miller’s counterpart in San Diego.

He sighed and said, “The major problem is a lack of confidence by the public in the symphony. We have a deterioration of credibility. How do we turn things around? One of the ways is through a vehicle, such as a community task force, appointed by the mayor. An independent group would analyze the situation. I support this kind of group.”

Stone said “three to four mileposts” have to be realized before a symphony can have effective management.

“You have to have return on investment--you have to meet certain financial criteria. I don’t believe they’ve had that, particularly with players,” Stone said.

“You have to have delivery of product. Under (Conductor and Music Director David) Atherton’s leadership, they were said to have been a quality group. But you’ve also got to have your share of the market. I doubt that they’ve had that.”

Stone called Atherton, who recently resigned, a conductor “of splendid training, of impeccable British discipline.” He had heard of Atherton “lacking the confidence of his players,” saying, “That is something you simply can’t have. Here we want the players to feel that I, the maestro and the board have done everything we possibly can for them. We want morale to be zooming. The feeling is great here, but we’ve had to work at it.

“People throughout the industry feel San Diego should have a major symphony. It has an ideal climate, a large population with plenty of wealthy people, an economy that isn’t depressed--that alone makes it almost unique . . . The idea ought to be augmenting a beautiful life style with great music.

“San Diego has all the ingredients of being the Athens of the West. The question is, does it want to be?”

Stone conceded, however, that San Diego’s problems are hardly unique. He said the Oakland Symphony has recently declared bankruptcy; Denver’s and Houston’s have suffered serious cuts; Buffalo’s is deeply in debt, and San Antonio’s, like San Diego’s, only recently nixed a season.

“There are 32 major orchestras currently operating in the United States,” he said. “Symphonies are the major classical-music delivery system in the country, and they’re in trouble.”

Still, “with product marketed properly,” Stone said any city--” especially San Diego”--can turn things around.

“If Cleveland can have a great symphony orchestra, well, then, I suspect San Diego can.”

Miller instituted a number of measures to turn things around in Dallas. He reorganized the board and its executive committee and fired the symphony manager. He hired an acknowledged whiz kid--former Cincinnati Symphony Manager Lloyd Haldeman, who later went to work for entrepreneur H. Ross Perot. Haldeman signed both a major recording contract and a name conductor who established, in Miller’s words, “instant credibility.”

Miller appointed a fund-raiser who persuaded civic and business leaders to give freely of time and money. In less than a year, the Dallas Symphony had paid off a $650,000 bank note, $300,000 in miscellaneous debts and reimbursed players for back salary. A new contract was negotiated, and a 52-week pay period--a hallmark of elite orchestras--was put into place.

Pride--even smugness--now seems the prevailing attitude. John Ardoin, veteran music critic of the Dallas Morning News, said that while commendably solving its problems, the Dallas Symphony Orchestra cannot yet be termed musically elite.

Its recordings have been “very, very good,” Ardoin said, “but it isn’t in the top echelon of symphonies around the country. It isn’t a Chicago, Boston or Los Angeles. It’s on a par with St. Louis. It isn’t as good as Cleveland. It’s better than Houston or New Orleans.”

Miller was asked if pessimism had ever clouded Dallas’ outlook.

“No . . .,” he said with a wry smile. “Not mine at least. It was simply a matter of (the Dallas Symphony) having had poor management, losing the confidence of the business community. Dallas is a can-do city. I’ve always thought San Diego was.”

Stone said if he were charged with heading San Diego’s comeback, he would ask “15 millionaires to pony up $2 million apiece even before I got there.”

“That’s a highly ambitious suggestion,” Solomon said, “but it would go a long way toward solving our problems.”

Solomon said San Diego’s present endowment is “slightly under $400,000,” up from $13,000 at the start of the fiscal year in 1985.

“San Diego is one of two major symphony orchestras that does not have an endowment,” Solomon said. “The average exceeds $13 million, which is one of our major problems. Average income contributed to a budget from endowment is 10%. Our endowment doesn’t cover even 1%.”

“You talk to people around the world,” Stone said, “and they say, ‘San Diego has a great zoo.’ Is elephants and tigers all San Diego is about?

“Who knows?” he said with a shrug. “Maybe it is.”