Ten years ago, though, the New Jersey Symphony wasn't only gritty; it was in serious trouble, with enormous debt and an impractical schedule, which took it around the state to regular stops at 11 venues. The musicians' lives were "pretty grueling," says principal bassoonist Robert Wagner, who as head of the orchestra committee is the musicians' leader. "There was never any sense of an occasion," says Karen Swanson, the symphony's former general manager and now director of development. Home base, of sorts, was Newark's Symphony Hall, but this was a home as needy, sometimes, as the city around it. Philip Thomas, the orchestra's finance director, says (with a kind of relaxed relief, grateful that these things don't happen any more): "I remember paying the heating bill for them so we could play there that night."
Soon financial disaster hit, and the board wanted to cut the musicians' pay. The musicians were furious, but one board member, Victor Parsonnet, a Newark cardiac surgeon, responded to their angry protests, and when he became board chairman in 1991, things looked up. "I won't take credit," he says, with utter modesty, though his leadership seems to illustrate a simple, though often forgotten, truth: If you treat people generously, life can be better. "I'm immensely fond of the musicians," he told me, apologizing, just in case this sounded "trite" (though really, in the often warlike climate of American orchestras, it sounded revolutionary). "I really love a lot of them."

Dr. Parsonnet does take credit for being at least the "final catalyst" in luring Mr. Macal -- a stronger music director, by far, than anyone the orchestra ever had -- to New Jersey. And the picture -- or, better, the team that could restore the picture -- was completed when Lawrence Tamburri came from the Richmond (Virginia) Symphony to become executive director. Mr. Tamburri impressed me with his own modesty, along with good spirits and decisive views of many issues in the orchestral world, which he always backs with solid data. But his greatest contribution to the restoration may have been what Maria Araujo, the director of education and outreach, calls his ability to find "win-wins," solutions which are good for everybody.
Not that business developments weren't important. The symphony's new leadership persuaded the New Jersey legislature to vote a crucial $3 million grant, which all but wiped out the orchestra's debt (in return for a promise, which the symphony kept, to balance its budget). The plans to build NJPAC gave a focus to the future -- every concert there really would be an occasion, and the symphony would also be part of Newark's revival. Travel was reduced from 11 venues to seven, which still can be a scramble to organize -- it's like "a massive game of 52 Pickup," says Ms. Swanson -- but at least it's manageable.

And yet it's the human and artistic improvements that stand out most. Mr. Macal, in his dizzy Czech English, says he told the orchestra, "I can make, if you allow me, miracle with you." The musicians responded, so eagerly that, when I talked to four of them, they cheerfully refused even to listen when I said their conductor might not always reach his fiery best.
The staff, too, seems happy and, if not quite relaxed -- there's too much to do -- gets so aroused by its many challenges (how, for instance, do you organize not just one volunteer group in your home town, but seven, one for each regular venue?) that it may not even think of relaxing. The staffers I met seem to love the symphony's annual festivals, like the Brahms and Tchaikovsky events, planned with the help of Joseph Horowitz, an activist scholar who's widely hired as a consultant to help orchestras develop programming themes. "It's an artistic high point," says the current General Manager Susan S. Stucker, a chance for even the symphony's administrators to concentrate on music. The musicians love the festivals, too. "You learn to understand so much more about the composer's style," says cellist Frances E. Rowell. "The level of the orchestra jumps up," says the concertmaster, Eric Wyrick, something the "Francesca" performance I heard, at the end of the Tchaikovsky festival, bears out. ("Thirty years I am thinking what to do with this piece," said Mr. Macal to me, highlighting one impulsive but savvy detail that helped make the performance vivid and unpredictable: "I fluctuate all the time the tempo without knowing it.")
The musicians also benefit from unique initiatives, among them the chance to apply for personal development grants, one of which gave a grateful violinist, Kelly Hall-Tompkins, a chance to study the German musical tradition with the past and present concertmasters of the Berlin Philharmonic. When the New Jersey Symphony started these, no other American orchestra offered anything like them, and the atmosphere they helped create led, in 1999, to contract negotiations so friendly that they sound like something out of a New Age management book. Representatives of management and the musicians sat in a circle, with no lawyers present, alternating places so they wouldn't square off as two separate sides. First they talked about long-term goals, and only at the end did they mention money.

This helps explain why the New Jersey Symphony became a model for other orchestras, and praise for it flows freely, even from much larger institutions. Henry Fogel, the executive director of the Chicago Symphony, was happy to tell me that "this is one of the best-managed orchestras in the country," and his words were amplified by John Gidwitz, president of the Baltimore Symphony, who specifically cites New Jersey as an example others might follow.
But what's going to happen in the future? Mr. Macal is leaving, and it's not hard to guess that he thinks he's taken the symphony as far as it can go without further changes. The musicians are passionate, but when they played Mahler's huge and complex Sixth Symphony this year, I heard them stretch beyond their limits; this is a piece that exposes every section of an orchestra, and some weren't up to the standard set by that spectacular Beethoven Ninth. To fix that, the symphony would have to pay higher salaries, and perhaps expand its season, so it can offer musicians year-round work, as most major American orchestras do. But where and with what funding could it give 52 weeks of concerts? Which isn't to say that serving its community in the ways it does now isn't worthy. But the symphony does have some interesting new challenges to face.

Wall Street Journal, June 19, 2001