Quotes of the Day
Mahler's Eighth may or may not be the greatest symphony ever composed, but it's surely the loudest: at its premiere in Munich in 1910, the impresario called it with Barnumesque flair the "Symphony of a Thousand" to convey the immense scale of the work, which requires a double orchestra, a pipe organ, three large choirs and eight vocal soloists. At a performance of the piece last month by the Singapore Symphony Orchestra, the forces were just shy of 500, more than enough to achieve the sense of grandeur that Mahler envisioned. In the finale, when the massed musicians joined in a mighty fortissimo, and the organist literally pulled out all the stops, glorious sound washed through the Esplanade concert hall like a thrilling sonic typhoon. It was a fine, acceptably idiomatic rendition of one of the most exalted masterpieces of German Romanticism—performed on an equatorial island in Southeast Asia.
The only inauthentic moment came after the music stopped: whereas a Western conductor would have turned around on the podium to bask in the rapturous ovation of a sold-out house, Lan Shui, the orchestra's Shanghainese music director, immediately hopped down from his perch and threw his arms around the nearest soloists, pushing them forward in a comradely display of humility.
Twenty-five years ago, such a performance of Mahler's Symphony No. 8 anywhere in Pacific Asia outside Japan would have been impossible. There simply weren't enough skilful players around, and the venues available to them were woefully inadequate. (The qualifier "outside Japan" is essential: the Japanese have been fascinated by Western classical music since the time of Mahler himself.) But these days, world-class orchestras and world-class halls for them to play in are cropping up throughout the region.
The most dramatic proof yet of Asia's rising musical sophistication came in late May, when the Hong Kong Philharmonic Orchestra exhibited the region's newest high-profile cultural trophy: the Dutch conductor Edo de Waart, who will take over as artistic director in October. In a lavish press conference worthy of the debut of a new SUV line, on the 71st floor of Hong Kong's tallest skyscraper, De Waart led the orchestra in a short piece by John Adams. Then the intense, affable maestro spelled out his grandiose ambitions: De Waart, 63, one of the world's most accomplished and sought-after conductors, announced that he wants to perform a complete cycle of Mahler's symphonies in 2011, the centenary of the composer's death, and that he plans to present an opera in concert every year, culminating in a performance of Wagner's The Ring of the Nibelungs, the most challenging work in the Western musical canon. But what De Waart mainly wants is a new concert hall.
Ten years ago Asia's cities were all building cathedral-like airports; now, they must have their performing-arts palaces. Singapore has its two-year-old Esplanade complex, with a sonic environment created by the legendary American acoustician Russell Johnson, which is regarded by expert listeners as one of the best halls anywhere. In Kuala Lumpur, oil money built a stunning new hall at the base of the Petronas Towers for the Malaysian Philharmonic Orchestra, which celebrates its sixth birthday in August. Futuristic opera houses are going up in Beijing and Guangzhou, challenging Shanghai's Grand Theater. In February, Jakarta opened a 1,500-seat mixed-use hall as a home for Indonesia's semiprofessional Nusantara Symphony Orchestra; Bangkok, too, is building a classical-music venue, an opera house on the sixth floor of a shopping mall.
And now Hong Kong will build a new arts center, which everyone in the territory's cultural community agrees is long overdue. The complex, which will occupy a 40-hectare swath of reclaimed harborside land in Kowloon, is in the final planning stages. The guidelines at present do not call for a symphonic concert hall, an omission De Waart condemns bitterly. "It is the death knell of an orchestra if it doesn't have its own home," he says. "Right now, we have a gigantic venue problem in Hong Kong—we must book soloists years in advance, but when they show up, we can't be sure of where they will perform." Indeed, a few days after he met the press, De Waart conducted a concert of works by Ives, Schumann and Brahms at the Hong Kong Cultural Centre, a richly detailed performance that confirmed the conductor's masterly influence on an orchestra—as well as the acoustic limitations of the hall.
The Dutch maestro's move East is a mirror image of a process that has been going on worldwide for more than a decade: the gradual Asianizing of Western classical music. Today, Asian-American cellist Yo-Yo Ma not only reigns supreme on his instrument but he is also probably the most famous (and friendliest) face of classical music, as he busily builds bridges between West and East and with the rest of the developing world. A truly global force, Ma's recent projects include a collaboration with Brazilian musicians and, on June 15, a performance in Singapore of a new cello concerto by Chinese composer Chen Yi, along with a quadruple concerto by acclaimed Chinese-American composer Bright Sheng. Following Ma's lead, young Asian players are nowadays edging out their Western counterparts at the best conservatories in Europe and America; and as they mature, Asian instrumentalists are increasingly getting star billing as soloists at top concert halls.
The same holds true for opera: on any given night, whether at a leading international house or a provincial company, the languishing soprano heroine or the menacing bass villain is now likely to come from East Asia—particularly Korea. The lyric soprano Hei-Kyung Hong and the coloratura soprano Sumi Jo currently dominate their roles to a degree unrivaled by any Western singers.
In no field is Asia's musical ascendancy more evident than the piano. By the end of the 20th century, the long-reigning archetype of the keyboard virtuoso, the temperamental Eastern European émigré, in the mold of Artur Rubinstein, was on the decline; impresarios, critics and audiences were growing despondent at the dimming of star magnetism among the new generation of players. The scene was set for Lang Lang and Yundi Li, two young Chinese musicians who are today the emerging stars of the rarefied world of concert-hall pianism. Both men were born in 1982, and have exclusive recording contracts with the Deutsche Grammophon label—long a mark of eminence in the field.
The two pianists both possess awesome technical mastery, but their approaches to the repertoire are quite different: Lang is a young Chinese Horowitz, pounding the keyboard with bravura intensity, whereas Li is a lucid interpreter with a poetic sensitivity, reminiscent of Artur Schnabel or Rudolf Serkin. After their respective debuts in America last year, the critics responded with the kind of ecstatic raves not seen in a long time. Richard Dyer, a critic at the Boston Globe, declared that Li "has the talent, the looks and the personal charisma to be a standard-bearer for a new generation." Following his recital at New York City's Metropolitan Museum in April, Li was besieged by his (mostly female) fans, and had to barricade himself in the green room to escape the crush.
How did East and West come to be so musically intertwined? After all, anyone who has listened to Asian classical music knows that it is rooted in an utterly different aesthetic. One explanation for Asia's increasing dominance of Western classical music is a perceived cultural difference in its approach to training young artists. "It takes a lot of time and discipline to develop a musical talent," says soprano Sumi Jo, speaking from her home in Rome, where she is preparing for a tour of Korea in July. "By the time I was eight, I was practicing the piano eight hours a day. I think Asian kids may have a greater capacity to sit in one place and concentrate and do what's expected of them than Western kids."
Yet there's more to musicmaking than just learning the notes. How did Asians discover their love for the glorious noise written by European composers hundreds of years ago? Composer Bright Sheng, a Shanghai native who was exiled to the Tibetan Highlands during the Cultural Revolution and has lived in the U.S. since 1982, finds the answer in history.
"The Asian world has opened its arms to Western culture for a long time, largely because of the powerful economic influence," he explains. "In the Tang dynasty, from A.D. 600 to 900, when the Silk Road was at its peak, China had an open-door policy and foreigners could go there to make a living." Sheng sees a parallel nexus between trade and culture in the contemporary scene: "Asia's interest in Western culture today arises directly from the terrific boom in economic prosperity. Let's face it, culture and the arts always have a close tie to the economy."
Or perhaps the answer lies in the stars. The ancient Greeks showed that the harmonic intervals of their musical system, which was based on Persian concepts and in turn served as the basis of modern Western music, reflected fundamental mathematical proportions that they believed were a reflection of the order of the cosmos—the music of the spheres. Is it possible that a C-major chord sounds sweet and "right" to every human ear because it has a transcendent, mathematical perfection? As De Waart puts it, "Perhaps 'our' music, based upon organic harmonics, is much more universal than we thought."
Whatever the reason for Asia's increasing mastery of Western music, the musicians themselves are shedding their modest reserve. His behavior on the conducting podium may be self-effacing, but Lan Shui talks about the Singapore Symphony Orchestra in bold, even hubristic terms. On the morning after his performance of the "Symphony of a Thousand" at the Esplanade, he asserts, "I think it's possible for us to play Mahler better than the Vienna Philharmonic. When we toured Japan with Mahler's Ninth Symphony, there were one or two performances that were as good as Vienna's—or not worse."
When the German conductor Kurt Masur toured Asia with the London Philharmonic in 2002, he proclaimed: "The future of classical music is more in Asia than anywhere else." The new generation of artists, led by the likes of Yundi Li and Sumi Jo, may well prove him right. But as they know better than most, the way to Carnegie Hall—or the Esplanade—is the same as it ever was: practice, practice, practice. At a recent rehearsal of Brahms in Hong Kong, De Waart scolded the orchestra's violinists for not moving their bows in perfect unison. "It's a small point," he explains, "but we have to start somewhere. In five years we'll be purring along like a Rolls-Royce."
- Jamie James | Singapore
- A wave of top-class talent is transforming Asia into a major player in the world of Western classical music