Portland, Ore. ? Conductor Carlos Kalmar seems equally at home with Mozart and Aaron Copland.

When he takes the podium, the Old World meshes with the New World in a fashion that has pleased critics, who have noted Kalmar’s energy, grace and ability to get the best out of musicians.

“Carlos represents the finest of the central European tradition, but also holds a keen interest in and passion for American music,” says Oregon Symphony President Tony Woodcock.

Kalmar, conductor at Vienna’s Tonkuenstlerorchester, was selected earlier this year to succeed 65-year-old James DePreist, who is retiring in 2003 as the symphony’s music director.

This is a coup for the Oregon Symphony, which lands a music director who has conducted orchestras across Europe and the United States, including the Philadelphia Orchestra, Chicago Symphony, Cincinnati Symphony and Minnesota Orchestra.

The Oregon Symphony, established more than 100 years ago, ranks among the largest orchestras in the United States and as one of the largest arts organizations in the Northwest, with an attendance of more than 320,000 people annually and 88 full-time musicians.

Although it has earned a solid national reputation under DePreist’s nearly 25-year leadership, Kalmar, 44, sees his mission as raising the orchestra to the next level.

“I would like … this orchestra to be in the top league of American orchestras,” said Kalmar, who was in Portland to conduct his debut concerts, though he doesn’t formally take over until August.

He likes the American approach to classical music, in which the conductor makes a direct connection to audiences through pre-concert discussions and active community involvement.

“When you’re a music director in Germany and Austria, you are an artist only. You do your music. Then you have a glass of beer, and that’s it,” he joked.

“But here, the musical part of the job is I would say maybe not more than 60 percent.”

Kalmar had decided to leave his Vienna post before he was offered the Portland job. The Tonkuenstlerorchester — Vienna’s third-ranking orchestra — was willing to extend his three-year contract for another year, but he declined.

“You can’t do anything in one year. You can’t have an artistic vision,” he said.

Kalmar, who has a three-year contract with the Oregon Symphony, will divide his time between Portland and Vienna, where his wife and two daughters will continue to live.

An avid hiker, Kalmar has set his sights on some of Oregon’s trails, if work allows it.

“The outdoors here is brilliant. But I know, I’m realistic, there is not so much time for the outdoors,” he said.

Kalmar’s parents, who fled Nazi-controlled Austria in the 1930s, met and married in La Paz, Bolivia. He was born in Montevideo, Uruguay, in 1958. When he was 15, his family moved to Vienna, where he attended the Vienna Conservatory and the Vienna Music High School.

He made his German debut in 1985 with the NDR Symphony Orchestra in Hamburg. He was music director of the Hamburg Symphony from 1987-1991, followed by four years at the Stuttgart Philharmonic and then the Anhaltisches Theater in Dessau from 1996-2000.

Kalmar has been guest conductor with the Vienna Symphonic Orchestra, Royal Scottish National Orchestra, Orquesta Nacional de Espana, Orchestra Regionale Toscana, and opera houses in Zurich, Switzerland; Hamburg and Frankfurt, Germany; and Brussels, Belgium.

The conductor says he wants to find new ways to attract more people to classical music, adding that he likes the idea of being experimental, but not at the expense of the pillars of classical music.

“It’s like being in the kitchen and cooking a good dish: If you forget the salt and pepper it won’t taste right,” he said.