For principal conductor Andreas Delfs, the Honolulu Symphony isn't just another orchestra. With all due respect to his family, the Honolulu Symphony is clearly Delfs' baby, and he sees it as his mission to ensure that it outgrows its current awkward stage.

The German native, who has been conducting for 23 years and is also the principal conductor for the Milwaukee Symphony, makes it very clear that he signed on for this job to implement change.

The Honolulu Symphony, with Delfs conducting, opens its 2008-2009 season Saturday with an all-Brahms program. The organization has weathered a series of budget deficiencies over the years, and in response is focusing on a core program of well-loved compositions, while offering new ticketing options designed to draw in more interested listeners (ticket information on Page D6).

We talked to Delfs on the eve of the new season. The outspoken director was blunt about problems facing the Honolulu Symphony, but also exuded confidence in his ability to turn things around.

First, tell us how you came to be principal conductor of the Honolulu Symphony.

I was spending a cold winter in upstate New York and I got a call from Honolulu. They were in a tizzy looking for someone to replace a conductor who had canceled. I looked out of the window and saw the heaps of snow and I said sure, I'll do it. That was in November of 2006, and on Christmas Eve I was offered the job. I had had such a good time with the orchestra — it's such a great group of people — and knowing all the problems that the orchestra had, I thought I could help and make a difference while still enjoying myself. That's why I signed on.

So you knew what you were getting yourself into. What's your plan for dealing with the problems?

We have several plans. If I had to narrow it down to the one thing that this orchestra needs from the community, it's respect. I've never worked with an orchestra that was so good and that got so little respect from its city. I've never seen a city treat a major cultural and educational asset so poorly. And I think it's been a long tradition — I don't want to blame anyone in particular — of taking this orchestra for granted and not realizing how good it is. The people who make our lives difficult don't really know what we're doing. They think we play Beethoven every Saturday night for an elite audience. They have no clue what we do in terms of education, how many children we reach, how many of our musicians are also teachers. An orchestra is much greater than the sum of its parts, and that is a concept that too many people in Honolulu don't grasp.

Why don't you think we get it?

It's partly the history of the orchestra. The orchestra has been in financial trouble too often. The musicians joke that the two words "financially troubled" should actually be in their title — "FTHS, the Financially Troubled Honolulu Symphony" — because you rarely read a line about this fabulous orchestra without the two words attached to it. I think there's also a history of mismanagement.

What are some of the practical steps that you're planning to take to help turn things around?

We have to prove — although it's been proven many times — that we are a first-rate group, that we attract large audiences, and we have to make clear that playing concerts in the Blaisdell is just one of the many things we do.

It takes me going to people individually and saying, "Listen, please forgive the symphony for the mismanagement of the past. Those days are gone, don't hold it against them forever." If you want to support your children's violin teacher, or the quartet that visits your children's school or that brings music education to underprivileged neighborhoods, or the orchestra that visits the outer islands and plays for kids who have never in their lives heard a note of classical music — if you want to support that, then come on board.

We also need to get much more financially stable, or the city will not respect us.

By the way, there's talk about bringing another big Broadway show in 2010. The last one almost ruined us.

You're talking about the symphony being displaced by "The Lion King" last year.

Yes. If that's the best the city thinks it can offer on a cultural and educational level, then someone has their wires crossed. That unprecedented move literally almost put us out of business. And what has the city learned from it? They treat us worse than before. And it's very frustrating, but you know what? It just engages my fighting spirit. I've worked for a lot of orchestras, but I will not leave this orchestra until we've made some progress in that respect.

How does this city's support — or lack thereof — for its symphony compare to other orchestras you've worked with?

Very, very poorly. An orchestra's health is measured by its endowment. There's money in the bank that collects interest and the interest is what gives the orchestra financial security. The Boston Symphony has an endowment in excess of $120 million. That means they have a $6 million operating budget. Our endowment is about $10 million, which, if we invest that conservatively, gives us about $500,000 to work with.

And if a big Broadway show comes again next year and displaces the symphony?

Quite frankly, the symphony would not survive it one more time. And it's such a poor showing of what is considered valuable.

We cannot move forward if things like this keep happening. To give you one of the most blatant examples, I just saw my friend Yo-Yo Ma, one of the greatest living cellists in the world. Everyone wants to see Yo-Yo Ma, and he would come immediately, but he's in such demand that he's booked two years in advance, and we cannot get our dates in place from the city because they won't release the dates we have to work with until we can show them that our books are perfect. But there is no nonprofit organization that has absolutely solid financial projections. We live by donations and ticket sales — that's why we're a nonprofit, and we should be treated as such. We should be treated like something that is of cultural value.

I cannot do what I want to do for this orchestra because our hands and feet are tied by people who don't really understand how an organization like this works.

The problems seem insurmountable. What's your motivation for taking it all on?

The people are my motivation. All of these musicians could find easier and better work elsewhere, but they love the community and they want to make a difference in the community. They love living here and like me, they say, gosh darn it, in this community there's room for us. We need to establish the respect that will allow us to do this every year without the fear that we will go bankrupt.

Let's talk about the upcoming season. There are a lot of familiar pieces on the bill — a sort of back-to-basics program. Why did you decide to go in that direction?

It was a direct response to last season. We were kicked out of the Blaisdell Concert Hall to make room for "The Lion King" and were forced to play much smaller venues, so we performed pieces that could be played in smaller spaces. And as much as we like to play those pieces, we are a full-size orchestra. I wanted to remind people of what the sound of a full-size major symphony orchestra can do to you.

I picked a couple of pieces that drive home that message, for example "Firebird," "Carmina Burana" and Beethoven's Ninth. If you don't get goosebumps hearing those pieces, and if they don't make you want to jump from your seat and yell "bravo," and make you want to support this group, then I don't know what else I can do. But I'm pretty sure we'll get the message across.