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Kuala Lumpur takes on the Ninth
9/18/2002 2:15 PM I am in the plane on the twenty-three hour haul back from Kuala Lumpur at the end of the most extraordinary summer of my life. It began back in May with a Bond-like leap from a Cruise ship in the Mediterranean, exchanging places with Elton John, so I could make the solo flight to Tel Aviv in time for my first rehearsal with the Israel Philharmonic. Then ten days in South Africa with Roz and Alexandra, culminating in three unforgettable days in the bush. Then back to Boston to prepare for the July 5th American program with the Philharmonia in Birmingham, which turned out to be William Warfield's last concert, and five days of teaching conductors at the London Master Classes at the Royal Academy. An all-too-brief though idyllic week of vacation with Roz on Vinalhaven in Maine, and back to Boston again for a week of rehearsals with the Youth Orchestra of the Americas before leaving for the tour to Washington and Brazil. A brief three days back home and then off for 5 weeks to New Zealand, Singapore and finally Malaysia. Whew!
As soon as I arrive back in Boston later today(!), I fear I will be swept up in all the activities of the start of the year and I despair of finding the time to tell some of the stories of the summer, so I'd better use these hours of the flight to get something down. Perhaps, since it is freshest in my mind, I should begin with Malaysia and work backwards.
I was apparently the first guest conductor to be invited to conduct the Malaysia Philharmonic for two consecutive weeks. It is a new orchestra - only four years old and consisting of mostly young players (average age around 30, I would guess). I had heard very good things about it before I went, but I wasn't quite prepared for the level of playing that I found. It is actually an orchestra of an international standard.
How the orchestra came about and how it exists is a strange story. The CEO of Petronas, Malaysia's biggest oil company, wanted, in addition to the tallest building in the world (actually two of them standing side by side), a
world class western orchestra to put in it. So he ordered a gorgeous
1000-plus seat concert hall to be built in the middle of the oil company's office building and then instructed his people to go out and get the orchestra. It is one thing for Prince Estherhazy or the Archduke William to order a world class orchestra, because the players were all right there. For the Malaysians it involved sending the newly hired Music Director around the world to pick players who were willing to uproot and move to Asia.
It's true that that meant finding mostly young players, and some are actually just out of Music College, but the first double-bass player, for instance, - a giant in musicianship as well as in height, left the non-pareil bass section of the Berlin Philharmonic for the adventure! And there are other older players; including a spectacular contra bassoon player from Hungary. I did not discern a single weak link in any section. There are predictably lots of players from Eastern Europe, fourteen Hungarians, Bulgarians and Rumanians, several Russians, a few Aussies, Americans and Brits, and some from German speaking countries. And what are they doing in Malaysia? Well, that is a question.
The Petronas tycoons knew that in order to have their world class orchestra they had to build a good concert hall, hire good players and pay them well (base salary for rank and file around $46K, which goes a long way in Malaysia). Also to get a music director of international standing and an experienced American manager to run the mostly Malaysian management team, but they didn't seem to worry about much else.
The hall is situated in the middle of a huge steel and marble shopping mall in one of the two skyscrapers with thousands of people milling around all day. However, few of them seem to know that there is a concert hall and a great orchestra playing there. There is a large picture of the orchestra on a wall, but that is it. I could see no other connection with the Malaysian community. They apparently do educational programs but most people I met during the two weeks I was there had no idea there was an orchestra in Malaysia, or if they did, they had never gone to hear it. I spoke to one of the salesmen in the Boss store, who told me that he had never been in four years, though his store was 200 feet from the hall. Even at the Petronas-owned Mandarin hotel next door, there was no information about the concerts. So it was strange for me, I'd walk about the hotel and the shopping center and realize that I was not likely to come across anyone who would have any idea that there was such a thing as a Malaysian Philharmonic let alone the first performance ever of Mahler.9th in that part of the world..
Naturally ideas of what could be done were quickly fermenting in my mind, but the ones I conveyed to Steve, the delightful American General Manager were received with a resigned "well, that would never be accepted by the powers that be". "The powers that be" turn out to be people on the 86th floor, who reputedly speak only to God and are rarely, if ever, seen at concerts. After all they are running a major oil company and much else besides, no doubt! But even the people in the marketing department do not regularly show up to the concerts! I was told that the CEO came to my final concert, but he did not come round to meet me. In fact in the fourteen days I was in Malaysia I didn't meet a single person connected with the orchestra, other than the American manager and a few members of the staff. There was no social event of any kind in that entire time. So I spent a good deal of time in my hotel room watching the Discovery channel (which is great incidentally - though there is no music on it). I did not go out of the hotel once in the first week, except to walk through the mall to the rehearsals. Where could I go?: Anyway I was nursing a cough which persisted throughout my stay.
Several players told me that they are frustrated by the small audiences, consisting mainly of ex-patriots and some Chinese. One of the back stage people told me that there had been only eight people at a recent pre-concert lecture. I was told that attendance at last year's Bruckner 9th had been sparse so there was much concern about the Mahler 9, since Mahler is not well known in Malaysia and few tickets had been sold.
There was a rather small audience for our first concert - Beethoven's Coriolan, Sibelius violin concerto with Finnish star Pekka Kuusisto and Brahms 4th, though there had been a severe rain storm earlier in the evening that might have kept people away. It picked up considerably for the second and third performances though neither was close to sold out. On Sunday the audience is always good because the tickets are cheaper and there is not such a strict dress code. There was also an article about the concerts in one of the papers. However, I was told that, as feared, tickets had not moved for Mahler 9th.
If the truth were known, and as my loved ones back in Boston can attest, I was feeling a bit low. . The rehearsals were going beautifully, and the music making was starting to really take shape (literally), but I couldn't tell if the players were enjoying it at all.. My usual stand byes, the white sheets, remained obstinately blank, though I did explain their purpose. The two concertmasters, both superb musicians, communicated with me quite a bit in a very friendly way and there were a few other players who let on they were having a good time, but it was hard to tell if I was "getting through". I was anxious about being away from Boston during the crucial first two weeks of the school year, missing the auditions, and my first classes and the first YPO rehearsals for the first time ever. I had been on the road for 5 weeks by now and was beginning to feel the strain. The nasty coughing persisted.
My mood shifted during the Saturday concert. The performances were really excellent, though the applause was very restrained. After the Coriolan, performed in an electrifying manner, I thought, there wasn't enough appaluse to accompany me off the stage. I began to realize that there was more that I could do other than just sit alone in my dressing room, feeling sorry for myself, hoping that somebody would come by for a chat!
On the Sunday I decided to go to a lunch reception being held in the foyer for subscribers. There was a smattering of orchestra players talking amongst themselves, but I went round introducing myself to everybody. Not that anybody had the slightest idea who I was! However, once I explained that I was about to conduct the concert later that afternoon, people perked up no end. One man I spoke to got so excited that he said he was going to run home to get his wife to come to the performance and several wanted my autograph. I met some people who had come to the free lunch but were not planning to come to the concert. Needless to say there was a flurry of activity at the box office while they all got their tickets!
About half an hour before the concert I was still standing in the foyer when a friendly, avuncular gentleman came up to me. He said he had seen me do a presentation in Chicago at an Arthur Anderson Education event four years ago and that it had made a huge impact on him. It turned out he was the Headmaster of the Garden International School in Kuala Lumpur. I immediately proposed that I came to talk to the senior class at the school on the Tuesday morning, and asked how many of them he thought he could get to come to the Mahler 9th. I told him about the occasion last year when the Headmaster of the Commonwealth School in Boston had taken the whole school, including the faculty and the staff, to a Boston Phil concert after I had done an assembly at the school. He said he thought we might be able to get as many as a hundred to come. I went to find the GM to see if some arrangement could be made to get the tickets to them.
I was surprised to see many very young children. Two young girls , Marissa and Sherry, twelve and ten years old, had told me that it was their very first concert. As I I signed their programs, I decided it would make sense to say a few words before beginning the concert to explain something about the story of the music, especially about the Coriolan Overture. I also told the audience about not clapping in between the movements, which I had been warned they usually did at the Sunday concerts. I said there were two reasons we don't clap between movements: one is because each of these pieces is a single indivisible whole and some people like to try to grasp the whole experience without any interruption. The other reason is that the applause accumulates silently during a performance and that is what makes the applause so loud when it finally explodes at the end of the performance!
I talked about the Brahms 4th not in musical terms or story line, but in terms of its emotional impact and I said that in a really good performance people could become extremely moved and excited. If at the end they found that they were feeling that way I wanted them to express it in very loud applause. It helped the orchestra to know that they had done a good job! Many of the players came from really far away places and needed reassurance that they were really appreciated. I also said that if they felt as though the performance was a life changing experience then they actually feel like standing up to clap.
That Brahms 4th performance, the third one we had done, was really magnificent. The applause at the end was deafening and very long drawn out - something people in the orchestra said they had actually never seen in that hall. Several people even stood up, which is apparently almost unknown in Malaysia.
Ever the unconscionable manipulator, instead of graciously and modestly receiving the applause with bowed head, as if the very idea of their enthusiasm was an embarrassment to me, I egged them on with my arms to even louder applause for the orchestra. I made every solo player and every section stand up separately, eking out to the maximum this precious moment of expressed, communal emotion. Now all that remained was to remind the orchestra, most of whom were standing politely but glumly staring out into the audience, as if their impending execution were the cause of the applause, or else idly chatting to their neighbor, that this applause was for THEM. But that would have to wait till the following Wednesday's rehearsal.
One last thing I had said to the audience in my brief remarks before the performance, was that if they enjoyed the concert I wanted them to go and tell all their friends to come to the Mahler concerts the following week-end.
In the foyer after the concert, I met Melissa and Sharon, the two sisters who had just experienced their very first classical concert ever. Talk about shining eyes! The whole place was awash with shining eyes. People didn't want to leave. I was overwhelmed by autograph seekers and by people wanting photographs of me with their children or just a hug. It was like a circus! Staid and experienced ex-patriot concert-goers from Hamburg and Sydney said they were overwhelmed by the playing, that the orchestra had surpassed anything they could have expected. One old bird from Vienna - there always seems to be one at most concerts - said it reminded her of the Vienna Philharmoinic. The only sad thing was that it didn't occur to any of the members of the orchestra, as they pushed through the crowds on their way out, to dwell awhile and share in the accolades. Like most orchestral musicians they probably assumed the applause and the tears of joy were only for the conductor.
So sad, this orchestral life, so deep-rooted those assumptions!
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About a year ago I had received a letter from someone in Malaysia, saying that they had started a Mahler Society and wondered if I could come to address them while I was there for the Mahler 9th. That Sunday night was the night we had agreed on. . So at 6.20 p.m., a scant 15 minutes after I had returned to my room from the concert hall, I was picked up by Hock-Doong and his wife and driven to a College a half an hour from the hotel. It was my first time outside the Petronas complex!
There are 20 members of the brand new Malaysian Mahler Society, but there were forty people there that night. They had found a room with a piano, which became rather cramped and stuffy with so many people, but now my mind was turned to Mahler. I talked and talked and talked. My throat hurt and I was coughing, but I couldn't stop. Their questions were perfect - not esoteric trivia, like the questions one so often hears from seasoned Mahlerians, though, yes, Virginia, we did indeed touch on the question of the number of hammer blows in the 6th! They were mostly neophytes and they wanted to know, from whence derives Mahler's power to affect people, what is his message for our time, why does he inspire people who are reserved and shy as much as the extroverted and outwardly passionate.
We roamed about in the Mahler canon, I played the piano and sang, or rather croaked. There were wives and girl friends who weren't hooked on Mahler who suddenly began to discover what it was all about, what had turned the heads of their men folk. We talked about Alma and I unravelled the first few pages of the First Symphony. I played the Adagietto and explained rubato. At the end I made everyone promise to bring ten people to the concerts at the weekend. I said if they didn't have ten friends they still had time make them, and that sharing their love of Mahler was the very best way of MAKING friends. The talk lasted for 21/2 hours.
Then there were signings, and photos and hugs and goodbyes. There was a most beautiful vote of thanks from the Austrian Ambassador to Malaysia, Dr Oswald Soukop. Which country, I ask you, would have its ambassador spend 21/2 hours in a dingy, stuffy college room listening to a lecture about a composer? Well, Austria of course, because that is what Austria is ABOUT, Mahler is part of Austria's Eternal National Product! Of course he was there. Where else would he be? He came to the concert, too, though I don't know if he brought ten friends!
After it all we went to a fabulous roadside café for a genuine local meal and at last, for the first time, I felt as though I was actually in Malaysia. It was a glorious day - a high point of my whole trip, but from then on in, it was ALL wonderful. I rested on Monday, mostly in bed, trying to break the cough, but it still rages after 3 weeks.
On Tuesday morning I was picked up by Ray Davis, the Head Master of the International School, and driven a good 40 minutes- my first glimpse of the gorgeous countryside and the majestic main mosque and a huge building, built by the Bin Laden Construction Company. In the tradition of possibility, Ray had cancelled school for everybody 10 and over. There were 700 kids gathered in the gym and I was let loose on them for nearly two hours. For me it was pure fun, hilarious, joyous improvised fun. I told them about Mahler and the Downward Spiral. How great art can take even the greatest suffering and despair and turn it around towards Radiating Possibility. I said the Mahler 9th was so complex and difficult that few people wanted to go to the concert, so there were masses of empty seats. Anybody would think I was crazy to ask a bunch of kids of that age to go to hear Mahler 9th for their first concert, but I had faith in both them and the power of the music and I knew they would get something amazing from it. I made them laugh at themselves and at the pressures of their achievement-driven lives. The ten-year-olds were all around me, wide-eyed and amazed by the energy of it all. I dropped any idea of trying to explain the theory of Possibility with diagrams of 9 dots, I just did it with them, I played and laughed with them and jumped around. We did Happy Birthday with a Princess whose birthday was the next day September 11th! So we talked about how we might transform the world together and then they sang wildly and enthusiastically for the little princess who was turning into a young woman the next day.
Somehow they got it and even their more self-conscious older colleagues standing at the back of the room (no chairs) - the 6th formers - got it too and came up and asked for autographs afterwards. One girl, 16 maybe, didn't want an autograph she wanted a favor. Would I be willing, she asked with tears in her eyes, to have the whole audience sing Happy Birthday for her father at the Mahler concert! I explained that standing in Possibility wasn't the same as getting your way. Next year she'll want a symphony orchestra!
I must have signed 150 autographs. Ken, a 15 year old held out a $50 bill for me to sign.. "I want to frame it keep it the rest of my life". I thanked Ray profusely for allowing me to come to the school and for making all the kids available. I knew he didn't think I was being polite.
Over three hundred tickets for the Sunday performance of Mahler 9th were bought by kids at the Garden International School! By mid-week tickets were virtually gone for Sunday. Steve, the General Manager went all out and doubled the advertising and alerted all the Press. A journalist, Goh ee Koon, more fan than objective observer, had interviewed me at my hotel and then showed up at the Mahler Society event. Her full page piece with a color picture and a huge headline: A love affair with life and Mahler appeared in the popular Star newspaper on Friday morning. After that it was a smooth run into the weekend. Sunday sold out completely and there were only 40 tickets left for Monday when I checked early in the day. I gave two tickets to the cleaning woman from the hotel. Neither she nor her husband had ever been to a concert. She brimmed over with enthusiasm when she came the next evening to turn down my bed. She seemed to be in complete agreement with the composer Alban Nerg "That was the most beautiful thing I ever heard in my life" she said. I spoke to three Austrian film makers, in the lobby of the hotel just as I was leaving to go to the hall. They were in town to film a commercial and were standing in the lobby wondering what to do. Of course, they were unaware that Kuala Lumpur had a symphony orchestra. I saw them after the concert -. they were overwhelmed. Three blind Muslim women, all of them new to classical music, were brought on Monday night by a woman who had heard it on Sunday. They cried as they told me how moved they were by the music.
Three or four hundred people showed up for the pre-concert talk on Sunday... And it was full of little children. Some were as young as five or six. What had happened? The kids at the school must have all told their younger siblings it was alright to come because I had told the story of Katie and Mahler 9.! I was so turned on by the kids that my pre-concert talk was like a variety show. I warned them about how long and tough the music was and made sure they all knew to go the bathroom before it began. The angels sat in absolute silence throughout the entire performance - even the final pages and the endless silence afterwards. It was a bloody miracle!
At the end of that performance the clapping was just as enthusiastic as at any European or American performance, with many in the audience on their feet. At one point, I held up my hand to stop the clapping and asked the orchestra to applaud the kids for being so quiet. At that the whole place erupted. It was a melt down moment, never to be forgotten.
After the final concert, on my last night, I invited the whole orchestra for a farewell party at the bar next door. Certainly the beer and wine was flowing, but now no one held back their excitement and pride at having played three such extraordinary performances, the delight at the full house and the reaction of the audience and their gratitude for the profound experience of performing the Mahler Ninth. What a satisfying experience! Now, I can't wait to go back!
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Here is the letter from the Headmaster of the Garden International School, and below that, a review that appeared of the Mahler 9 performance:
Dear Benjamin,
I have deliberately let a few days pass after your visit to Garden International School in Kuala Lumpur to allow the effects to sink in. My conclusion is that this week a little bit of 'magic' has occurred.
In April 1997 I was attending The Arthur Anderson 'World Education Conference' in St. Charles, Chicago. It was an impressive affair attended by some of the world's most influential educational brains, both academic and political, and addressed by some of the world''s most influential educational and economic gurus. At the very end of the conference, in what was supposed to be a slightly more light hearted finale, one Mr. Benjamin Zander addressed the one thousand or so delegates. For the first time during the four-day conference the auditorium came alive, as these normally very serious and staid people become animated and motivated to the point of giving you a standing, cheering ovation. At that point I knew that I wanted the students and teachers in my school to hear that same enthusiastic approach to gaining a positive outlook on life through identifying possibilities. However, the practical side of getting Benjamin Zander to talk to a school assembly in Malaysia, on the other side of the world, seemed an impossibility and my dream was put to one side although never completely shelved.
When I heard that you had accepted the invitation to conduct the Malaysian Philhamonic Orchestra here in Kuala Lumpur, I immediately bought tickets for the concert series. The thought never crossed my mind that you would have the time, in your busy schedule to come to our school, or that we could ever afford the fees to invite you. However, our chance meeting in the foyer of the Concert Hall was part of the little bit of magic that has been working in the past week. As one who looks at and expects to recognise all possibilities, you immediately offered to come to the school and to talk to the children. And to my amazement and gratitude suggested that to introduce children in Malaysia to the 'Art of Possibility' and the joys of Mahler, to encourage them to attend the first ever performance of Mahler's 9th Symphony in Malaysia, would be all the payment that you required.
On Tuesday morning the 'magic' took full effect and for two hours you entranced and captivated the minds of over 700 of our students. The immediate effect upon the children was similar to that I had experienced in Chicago, one of sheer enjoyment, motivation and enthusiasm. To my great delight, in the days following your talk the effect has not dimmed. The children, and I might add, the staff, are still walking with lighter steps, taking a positive approach to the world around them and saying 'WOW'. As I have never forgotten your presentation in Chicago, these children will never forget the magic that occurred at Garden International School last Tuesday. Let us hope that they carry these same feelings into adulthood and help make our future world a more understanding and better place.
Benjamin, on behalf of the 700 children and their teachers I want to wish you every success for the coming Mahler concerts and send you a very big thank you for brushing our lives with possibility.
May fate bring us together again.
Very Best Wishes
Ray Davis Principal, Garden International School, Kuala Lumpur
A magnificent Mahler 9 by Zander
The Malaysian Philharmonic Orchestra (MPO) followed a fine set of concerts under Benjamin Zander and guest violinist, Pekka Kuusisto in early September with a staggering series of three concerts of Mahler's last Symphony, the No. 9 in D major. Described as the most beautiful music ever composed by Alban Berg, this music is difficult to listen to if one does not understand the various strands that Mahler used to describe his own painful experiences of his life. There was large turnout for Zander's afternoon talk. It helped the members who showed up to appreciate the symphony much better. In fact, the Dewan Filharmonik (DFP) personnel told me that is a hall record for the number of people that turned up to a pre-concert talk. The maximum they ever had was about 40. There were easily 300 to 400 people who heard Zander himself presenting the talk and illuminating each important motive in the Symphony on the piano or singing the parts out loud. He was a really excellent presenter and managed to even make the children (mainly from Garden International School) enjoy the experience.
A large orchestra was assembled to perform the symphony without break. The first movement's themes and motives emerged clearly as the DFP Hall's superb acoustics allowed every important musical strand to appear crystal clear to the audience. The hall's acoustics could accommodate the very soft opening section in the cellos, horns, harps and violas. The MPO also managed to make to climaxes sound massive and yet suitably clear. The thematic references to his previous work, Das Lied von der Erde (The Song of the Earth) were also tossed around the massive musical canvas, without any loss of clarity too. The second violin figure (the love theme) and the syncopated and rhythmic trumpet figure (the hate theme) resolved beautifully at the end of this movement in the horn parts - led by the excellent Sabine Pade.
The second movement is a set of Landler and Waltzes (Austrian dances). The violas were also in prime form and they set the movement into motion. The bassoons led by Tamas Benkocs played a cheeky figure duly answered by the clarinet section, led ably by Philip Arkinstall. The clarinets had a really fun time and Zander extracted the maximum characterization for the superb MPO wind players in their whirling parts. The violas were also excellent here in this movement. The string players also dug deep into their string instruments with repeated heavy down-bow movements to hammer out the heavy-footed Austrian dance rhythms.
The third movement was an orchestral tour de force. Zander's tempo (speed) was indeed very fast and challenged the MPO players to the hilt. In the pre-concert talk, he even suggest the conductor must get the orchestra to play "almost out of control", like a car almost going over a cliff to reach the depths of what Mahler meant.
The fourth movement started with a passionate theme in the strings (on their lower strings in the high positions). The fact that Mahler wrote the movement in D flat major makes it all the more poignant and the strings often play suspensions over a long period of time amidst intermittent climaxes. The highlight here was the superb horn playing of Sabine Pade (Zander later presented her his bouquet of flowers at the end of the concert). As the two cymbal clashes symbolize a defiant attitude to death and then the willingness to accept death, the MPO and Zander built up a final climax of great intensity and passion, only to fade away softer and softer - ending the piece with a sublime calm and utter peace. The audience applauded thunderously and Zander led each principal player of the MPO for his/her special curtain call and then the each section rose to acknowledge the loud ovation.
Benjamin Zander is one of the great Mahler conductors of our times and the MPO loves to play with him. The Malaysian audience would certainly welcome him back and we Mahlerians hope the DFP invite him back for the next season. A suggestion would be for him to do Mahler's Das Lied von der Erde, coupled with Schubert's Unfinished Symphony in the first half - a choice of programme that he has done successfully in USA in the past.
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