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| While we were sleeping |
| Written by CH Loh | |||
| Tuesday, 16 June 2009 16:56 | |||
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WHILE WE ARE witness to the political opera buffa that passes for the culmination of fifty-one years of nation-building, Thailand has been quietly accomplishing what we can still only aspire to. Trekking around Bangkok in search of contemporary music life, I found plenty of fodder for reflection. The city has three major orchestras: the Bangkok Symphony, Siam Philharmonic and the Thailand Philharmonic. And amazingly, they are not imported orchestras like the Malaysian Philharmonic, but are instead staffed largely by Thai musicians. How’s that for radical? The Siam Philharmonic also plays for the Bangkok Opera, which has so far staged not just the usual suspects (Puccini and Mozart mugshots head any opera billboard) but more contemporary works such as Britten’s Turn of the Screw and Wagner’s Das Rheingold as well as its musical director Somtow Sucharitkul’s operas, Ayodhya and Mae Naak. The seven-year-old opera company plans to present the entire Ring Cycle by 2010. Let’s see if we have run out of maggi mee musicals based on historical political figures by then, and wake up to how far behind we are (although a colleague suggests that Tun Dr Mahathir would make a good subject for an operatic cycle of our own of Wagnerian proportions). The foundation of this vibrant music scene lies surely in the many universities and their substantial music and composition programmes. Veteran composers Weerachat Premananda and Narongrit Dhamabutra hold fort in the heart of Bangkok at the prestigious Chulalongkorn University, while the next generation spreads the sounds of Thai contemporary music via various satellite institutions. Atibhop Pataradetpisan, chair of composition at the lavish School of Music at Mahidol University at Salaya; Anothai Nitibhon at the compact Faculty of Music at Silpakorn University out west across the river; Denny Euprasert at the cosy Conservatory of Music at Rangsit University on the northern fringe in Pathumthani; these are just some of the talents who are invested in the future of Thai music. It’s not enough that Mahidol University’s campus, the crown jewel of Thai music schools – with its magnificent concert hall housing the full-time resident Thai Philharmonic, a main multi-story block of rehearsal rooms and studios, and a new complex nearing completion – dwarfs Singapore’s opulent Yong Siew Toh Conservatory in scope and grandeur. The National University of Singapore’s pride and joy has been buying up regional talent, including some of our own young musicians and composers, to mark itself as king of the music turf. But not for long. The Thais are determined to jostle for regional prestige with a full-fledged music conservatory of their own, and a location on the banks of the Chao Phraya river has already been earmarked for the purpose. Meanwhile, we’re still embroiled in legal battle over the rights to Rasa Sayange with Indonesia. Surely there’s a lesson to be learnt somewhere.
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