With a new chief conductor, the City Chamber Orchestra of Hong Kong
finds two heads are better than one.
It takes two for the City Chamber Orchestra of Hong Kong (CCOHK) - not
to tango but, as founder, artistic director and principal oboist Leanne
Nicholls says, "We work two years in advance." So even though,
at the time of our conversation, the CCOHK is a couple of concerts away
from completing its 2007-2008 commitments, it has already engaged conductors
for the next couple of seasons and decided on the composers for the special
concert series after the upcoming break.
Chief among the conductors for the 2008-2009 season will be Frenchman
Jean Thorel. An unusual maestro, Thorel believes in taking things into
his own hands: he has a website but not an agent and so on his first visit
to the Fragrant Harbour in 2005, he went personally knocking on the doors
of the territory's leading orchestras. After introducing himself at the
CCOHK (an orchestra he first came to know about via the internet!), he
and Nicholls ended up sitting down and talking for two hours straight!
Two years after that fruitful meeting, in October 2007 Thorel found himself
wielding the baton for the CCOHK's Sound the Trumpet concert whose programme
included the Hong Kong premiere of Bach's Brandenburg Concerto No 2. During
that visit, as a guest conductor he noticed the orchestra showed much
unexplored potential and also thought it needed a chief conductor "to
give landmarks and directions for the work".
Coincidentally, he wasn't alone in his conclusion. "We were thinking
along the same lines," says Nicholls. "Actually, we thought
about the same thing at the same time!" Up until then, the orchestra,
which has been in existence since 1999, had only worked with guest conductors
- or even sometimes performing whole concerts without a conductor at all
- but it was obvious the time was ripe for a change in operating style.
However, Nicholls
knew that a chief conductor for this particular orchestra would need quite
special qualities as, she says, CCOHK's position in the cultural scene
is very clear. "Our works are less mainstream anyway, and maybe even
more so because [normally] there's not much possibility to hear the works
we perform in Hong Kong anyway. We want to do everything from Baroque
to modern and crossover. [We needed] to find someone open-minded enough
to do that, but to do it well. Baroque, you have to know how to play;
you have to know the style. It's not something that, if you haven't studied
or know about, you can do, really."
She acknowledges the large number of available conductors but many "for
Baroque especially, don't have that extra string to their bow! What we
don't want to do is to play old styles and play them not so well. What
we want to do is to put a mark on them and we have been looking for someone
who can do that."
Finally, on April 18, came the announcement that someone had been found
and, starting this September, Jean Thorel will assume the position of
chief conductor of the CCOHK. An experienced wielder of the baton who
formally studied conducting for both orchestral and ballet performances,
Thorel began conducting orchestras in his early 20s but knew much earlier
that he wanted to be a music maestro.
The permanent conductor of Paris's Stringendo Orchestral Ensemble since
1985, Thorel has also been in demand as a guest conductor throughout Europe
- particularly in Scandinavia where his first concert was "so difficult
that nobody wanted to do it". Conduct it he did, and very successfully
too. But while he will continue to honour his commitments in France's
capital and accept guest conducting invitations elsewhere in 2008-2009,
Thorel says, "I really want to support Leanne's work. I don't intend
at all to come over only for conducting and making rehearsals and to say
goodbye after that."
Instead, his plan is to fly in to attend meetings and so on, and to oversee
auditions for the CCOHK, as he did during his most recent visit to Hong
Kong. In addition, among other things, he will work with Nicholls to pick
the music the orchestra will perform over the course of an entire season.
"It will be a joint effort," says Nicholls, "and that's
where orchestras are moving these days." So it really does take two
for the CCOHK: two years advance planning by two at the top!
A
chamber orchestra may not be as commanding as its symphonic counterpart
but it may be much more colourful.
words yvonne teh
"When I came
to Hong Kong, I used to organize a lot of salon concerts at my home. And
among my friends too - because that was the only place for chamber concerts
and music about 18 years ago." Thus divulged Leanne Nicholls, artistic
director and principal oboist of the City Chamber Orchestra of Hong Kong
(CCOHK), before noting, "This is in contrast to now when chamber
concerts are going into concert halls." Nicholls should know because
the CCOHK's 2006-2007 season closer, a special concert entirely devoted
to the music of Sir Francesco Paolo Tosti (1846-1916) is scheduled for
the HK City Hall Concert Hall, a venue with a 1,434 seating capacity.
Tosti was a cosmopolitan and celebrated music teacher now considered to
be Italy's greatest composer of salon music, and in homage to that Nicholls
says of the programme of songs sung in English, French and Italian, "We're
not going to just play a whole concert of Tosti. Instead, we're also going
to create the 19th century salon drawing room atmosphere - all the gestures,
the songs, the way [things were so that] it wouldn't just be one person
singing the whole night. It would be different people getting up to perform.
And we're going to create that on stage." Back in 2003, the CCOHK,
which was established in 1999 by Nicholls, was described in a local newspaper
as "small but professional" and "known for its quirky classical
concerts, with as much emphasis placed on the staging as the music".
In an interview with the Australian-born musician, bc discovered she takes
great pride in that characterization and thinks it remains true some four
years later. "When I'm planning a concert, it's not going to be your
average 'overture-concerto-symphony sandwich' as we call it. Quite often,
we're very programmatic with our programming in the sense of choosing
music that all sort of connects together in some way. And, yeah, that's
something we've always done. For example, to create a salon atmosphere
for this concert is not something gimmicky at all. It's just as it was."
Why the focus on the music of Tosti? After all, he may have been knighted
by his friend, Great Britain's King Edward VII, but he is still less well
known than Italian contemporaries like Verdi (Aida and Rigoletto) and
Puccini (Madam Butterfly). Though, in his defence, this is less a reflection
on his musical genius than his being a songwriter - of some 400 songs,
in fact! - for high-society drawing rooms and royal salons.As far as Nicholls
is concerned, Tosti's lack of fame makes for one good reason to organize
a homage to the man and his music - in keeping with one of CCOHK's missions
to ensure that "Our audience can always expect to hear the familiar
but, at the same time, there's always something new". And another
reason is, as she points out, "His music is very much associated
with the word 'chamber', which is what we're all about. We create intimate
concerts and Tosti's music is in line with what we do." Then, as
the discussion moves into the realm of overall objectives, she explains,
"We believe that as people pay and make the effort to come out for
a whole night, we should offer them the whole experience. And if at the
same time they're exposed to new music, then that's also something that's
interesting for everyone - not just for the audience but for the orchestra
too." And so Tostissimo is an entirely new programme especially conceived
for the concert. As Nicholls says, "It's unusual to hear a whole
programme of Tosti. Because normally a singer would choose just one or
two songs by Tosti as part of a recital. In contrast, this concert is
entirely focused on the music of Tosti. So it's very special." And,
she hopes, it is a great way to introduce local audiences to the music
of a composer whose pieces were very popular during the Belle Époque.In
December, the CCOHK will tour Italy, and Ortona, the birthplace of Tosti,
will be among the towns they will perform in. Some months before that
- more precisely, this June - Professor Francesco Sanvitale, director
of the National Tostiano Institute in Ortona and the world's leading Tosti
scholar, will visit Hong Kong bringing with him a collection of the composer's
correspondence, which highlights how highly regarded he was in royal and
music circles alike. Some of those letters - which include epistles from
the likes of legendary Australian soprano Dame Nellie Melba and famous
Italian tenor Enrico Caruso - will be on display in the HK City Hall Concert
Hall during the Tostissimo concert. Professor Sanvitale also will read
from a selection of the letters to provide biographical background and
historical context to Tosti in what will be a window into the composer's
life.Nicholls emphasizes that Tosti really did have an amazing career:
"He went to London [in 1875 at the age of 30] and five years later
became the singing master of the royal family… for that post, he
had to write a lot of singing music as well. He organized salon concerts
in the royal court and he was also responsible for promoting a lot of
the music of Verdi and Puccini in England." And not only was he the
first person to see the libretto of Verdi's Aida, he "turned down
the opportunity to be the tutor for some of the singers of these operas
because he wanted to stay in London and establish himself there".Although
Tosti did eventually return to his native Italy in 1910, he spent the
best part of his life as an expatriate. As Nicholls observes, "He
really made an effort to contribute something to life in England. It wasn't
just about prestige and money. Obviously, with his connections to the
royal family, he was quite well off. But it was finding somewhere where
his talents and abilities could be used to the full." Which mirrors
Nicholls herself. As someone who has been in Hong Kong since 1990, the
founder and artistic director of CCOHK can obviously relate to Tosti's
life. For her own part, "Coming to work in Hong Kong, I feel my role
with the orchestra is fulfilling and a big contribution to society in
the sense that we never had a chamber orchestra before. So I'm filling
a niche. And am able to make use of the experience I have." Which
she finds very fulfilling. "Because it's not good enough for me to
be here and going out to parties - and parties are not my scene! I'd rather
be doing something intellectually stimulating, whether it earns a lot
of money or not!"Tostissimo will be performed at the Hong Kong City
Hall Concert Hall on June 6 at 8 pm. Tickets are priced at $100, $200
and $300 and available from URBTIX, 2734 9009.
