It was in fact true: With an annual salary of $285,000, Kluger was making a third of what some of his professional peers were paid. But he's been making up for lost wages - at least a bit.

After stepping down as president on Aug. 31, 2005, Kluger continued to draw a salary from the Philadelphia Orchestra Association, receiving $313,000 in compensation - $169,000 in the year immediately after his departure, and $144,000 the next year, tax forms show - even when first a temporary and then a permanent successor were in place and being paid.A spokeswoman would not say why the orchestra continued to pay Kluger after he resigned.

"All I can tell you is that the payments in fiscal year '06 and '07 were part of our contract with him and that they didn't continue after 8/31/07," said Katherine Blodgett in an e-mail response to a list of questions.

Kluger has been an arts consultant - first at AEA Consulting, then at WolfBrown - since his resignation after 16 years at the orchestra's helm.

He explained the ongoing compensation this way:

"My agreement with the orchestra provided that if I decided to leave, I would be available to them as a consultant for two years," he said in an e-mail. "The reasoning behind this was that, given my central role there for 20 years, they would benefit during the transition period from my extensive knowledge and institutional memory."

Kluger said he "provided advice on a variety of matters to musicians, board and staff. Although the amount of contact was obviously greater at the beginning, I have continued to receive requests since I left the orchestra three years ago."

He said he did not keep track of how many hours he spent consulting for the orchestra.

Apart from his contact with the orchestra, Kluger helped Mayor Nutter fill the city's culture czar position - with New Yorker Gary Steuer, announced Friday - and was recently named by Nutter to chair the city's Cultural Advisory Council. The volunteer body is an organized way of capturing input for the mayor from the arts community.

Several nonprofit and search executives said it was not typical but not unheard-of for a longtime leader to continue to receive compensation after stepping down, either as a contribution toward retirement or as part of an ongoing consulting arrangement.

"As long as it's reasonable and for a limited period of time, I think it's appropriate," said Judith M. von Seldeneck, founder, chairman and chief executive officer of Diversified Search Ray & Berndtson.

While Kluger was president, the orchestra was cognizant of the fact that he was being paid well below the going rate. "I think the board is very well aware that if Joe were to leave, we would probably have to pay considerably more for his replacement," former orchestra chairman Richard L. Smoot said in 2004.

But as it turns out, the orchestra did not join other top U.S. ensembles that pay their chief executives salaries in the mid to high six figures. Kluger's successor, James Undercofler, was paid $383,000 in the first year of his three-year contract, according to tax forms covering the year that ended Aug. 31, 2007.

On those same forms, music director Christoph Eschenbach is shown making $2,297,000 - a 45 percent jump over the previous year's compensation of $1,586,000.

Eschenbach is paid on a per-service basis, and some of the increase in pay was due to the fact that fees for leading a late-summer orchestra tour in 2006 were not paid until the following fiscal year.

His compensation that year was "higher, in part, because of payment for services in '06 that were made in '07," Blodgett said.