RT IN HK

What a change of gear – from Luxembourg to arguably the most intense city on earth, the great concrete jungle that is Hong Kong. Working here with the Hong Kong Philharmonic directing a program of Mozart’s Paris Symphony, Vaughan Williams’s The Lark Ascending and Fantasia on a Theme of Thomas Tallis and Beethoven’s Seventh Symphony. As ever, Mozart is so much more difficult to render than Beethoven. His is a more gestural way of communicating whereas Beethoven is structural, developmental and evolutionary. It’s good having a large orchestra for the Paris – roughly the size Mozart used when first performed at the Concert Spirituel in Paris. On the other hand when he was in Prague the orchestra there was tiny – just four or so first violins.

Edo de Waart has done a great job turning this orchestra around and it now boasts some very fine players. What Hong Kong most desperately needs is a new hall, which is now mooted for 2015. Just north of the suburban line and past the New Territories is the fastest growing city in the world with a population of 8 million: Shenzen. It’s just completed a new hall with acoustics by a Dr Toyota and apparently it’s incredible.

Our last ACO stop on our European tour was in Luxembourg, pop. 80,000. They too have recently built themselves a hall. Last year they saw 160,000 attendances! In Hong Kong, I’m at the City Hall. Wollongong, pop. 400,000, is knocking their Town Hall down. Australia – what an embarrassment! Probably the wealthiest country in the world with the poorest cultural infrastructure.

We push on!

I haven’t heard much from the 2020 Summit, but scrolling through some blogs I found some disturbing reactions to there being a perceived disproportionate representation of ‘boring’ ‘ultra-conservative’ classical types.

One person [scroll down to comment #12] makes the comment that as classical music compromises only 1.5 % of CD sales that this was disproportionate to the general population.

The other disturbing reaction was to call Richard Gill ‘ultra-conservative’ because he and others are advocating a shift/return to a quality rigorous music education based on access to sound theoretical and practical training. Meaning you learn to play an instrument properly, as well as strum a guitar, and to read music.

Ok, he shouldn’t have brought hip hop into it ’cos we know hip hop artists can have a sharp and relevant language that resonates – think Danny Hock but at other end of the spectrum is mainstream of vacuous commercialism. As rapper 50 Cent’s manager said, “Our aim is to bring more brand to the youth quicker”. But just because you have access to a good and ‘Serious’ education doesn’t mean you can’t find your hip hop, beat, folk, post punk, pop, R&B voice. I don’t know what these people are proposing but to criticise the voice of Richard Gill, desperate to find the best possible education platform, is displaying a lamentable ignorance.

The other concern about the 1.5% of CD sales comment is equally worrying. The corollary of this argument being that the highest selling CD ‘artist’ should’ve been part of the Summit – an Australian pop idol?A devil’s advocate would argue that yes, they deserve to be part of it as (a) they may well be as creative as anyone else there (b) because they represent the tastes of the majority, which, it might be added, elected the government that made this summit possible.

I pick up on these comments because I think they are most probably indicative of a generally held view point that ‘serious’ art education is elitist and ultra conservative. I repeat: all Gill and others are advocating is finding structure in music education that affords our population a strong musical base. No one is forcing you to attend an ultra-conservative concert. If these critics did ever attend a concert or if they had the courage to extend themselves they’d find an ACO concert can be a collaboration with some of Oz’s best poets and folk/pop/avant-garde/singer-songwriters et al. and that the education we have received liberates us to fly higher and further with art. The more you know the more you can enjoy.

This is what we are advocating with music education.

Think of Miles Davis and his education [at New York’s Juilliard School] – without it he wouldn’t have been able to achieve what he did. Think, on the other hand, about Paul McCartney and how he struggles to write so called ‘classical’ music. It is common knowledge that his lack of musical training has shackled him in his post pop ambitions. Imagine what would have happened if he could… Jimmy Hendrix was planning on studying music at Juilliard (and to collaborate with Miles Davis) but then he went and choked on his own vomit. Again just imagine what he would have produced were he able to read and write music properly.

Now let’s consider the opposite reality of the ‘ultra-conservative’ Jonny Greenwood – one of the musical minds of Radiohead. He had an ‘ultra-conservative’ ‘serious’ music education at Oxford. He plays the viola, and the Ondes Martenot (YouTube here and here) as well as being one of the world’s leading rock guitarists. Hence he is able to compose music. His inspiration is from Eastern European contemporary composers such as Penderecki! He recently wrote the film score to There will be Blood. I rest my case.

Richard Tognetti