{"id":4162,"date":"2019-12-02T12:43:05","date_gmt":"2019-12-02T05:43:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thaicritic.com\/?p=4162"},"modified":"2019-12-03T14:31:51","modified_gmt":"2019-12-03T07:31:51","slug":"europes-top-brass-in-salaya","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thaicritic.com\/?p=4162","title":{"rendered":"Europe\u2019s \u201cTop Brass\u201d in Salaya"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Chetana Nagavajara<\/em><\/h4>\n\n\n\n

Allow me to begin on a personal note. From 2008 to 2017, I was, once a year invited to the Free University Berlin as a Research Fellow, and I always timed my visit to coincide with the Berlin Music Festival in September, so that I could have the privilege of hearing the leading orchestras from Europe and America. 10 years were a period long enough to enable me to form an opinion, and I am prepared to confess that particularly 3 orchestras are held by me in high esteem, namely, the Concertgebouw of Amsterdam, the Philharmonia of London and the San Francisco Symphony. So when I heard that the Brass Ensemble of the Concertgebouw was coming to visit us, I made it a point not to miss it. Had I not been invited by the organizers, I would have bought myself a ticket. And I was not disappointed. A great orchestra is a sum of its parts, and to be able to hear the brass ensemble would already be good enough for me.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                My experience with\nBerlin was not always a musical bliss. I felt uncomfortable with the resident\norchestra of the Philharmonie Berlin. The musicians are virtuosos and are\nconscious of their virtuosity. They do not let the audience sense by themselves\ntheir musical superiority, but they physically exhibit their performing\nprowess. That virtuosity has to be seen too. That was why the visits by\nthose distinguished non-German orchestras (including German orchestras of great\nmerits, like the South West German Radio Orchestra from Baden-Baden which\nstupid politicians have decided to disband and merge into a lesser orchestra!)\nwas a happy respite for a music lover \u2013 not an orchestra fanatic \u2013 like myself. I always admired the Concertgebouw for\nits musicality and its professionalism, the latter quality being extremely\ndifficullt to explain, but I shall try. Every time I went to a concert by the\nConcertgebouw I could feel that they were never self-serving, but were intent\non serving the music. Beyond that the musicians seemed to be enjoying\nthemselves, and that enjoyment became contagious. The audience was drawn into\nthat miraculous communal experience of music, imperceptibly and naturally. No\nexhibitionism was needed as an extra stimulus. It was more of a communication:\nit bordered on a communion, even. So I have since remained loyal to the\nConcertgebouw, and I went to Salaya last night to enjoy the concert as well as\nto express my gratitude for those happy hours in Berlin.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

          Contrary to\nwhat the Thai MC was saying about the plight of brass players in Thailand, I do\nmaintain that they have not done too badly at all. I have been to the school\nbig band contest almost every year and found the standard to be very high. Let\nus not forget that the number of school children learning brass instruments\nruns into hundreds of thousands. Let us not forget either those string players\nwho are struggling very hard with very few qualified teachers. What these brass\nplayers need is the opportunity to hear \u201ctop brass\u201d players, and they and their\nteachers were smart enough to throng to the Mahidol Sithakarn Auditorium last\nnight to be enlightened. Many of us must have appreciated this rare occasion\nall the more for we have grown up with local, self-taught brass bands that usually\nconstitute an indispensable part of a procession for the ordination ceremony of\nnew Buddhist monks.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

                The concert programme\nwas well thought-out. Those compositions chosen by the musicians themselves\nwere varied, testifying to their ability to address a wide variety of styles,\norigins and historical periods. Added to their core repertoire was a new\ncomposition by our own Narongrit Dhamabutra and\nan arrangement for brass ensemble of two of Rama IX\u2019s favourites by\nVanich Potavanich. I shall deal with the top brass\u2019s choices first. Even compositions\nby one and the same composer, in this case Johann Sebastian Bach, were\ninterpretative challenges. The cantata, \u201cWachet auf, ruft uns die\nStimme\u201d, demands spiritual solemnity, whereas theBrandenburg\nConcerto No. 3 is full of worldly vitality. To place the two compositions\nin a sequence was a hard nut to crack, but the ensemble acquitted itself very\nwell. What a remarkable feat in the change of styles, when they tackled, after\nBach, those strange sounds and rhythms of Detlev Glanert\u2019s Concertgeblaas<\/em>!\nWhile admiring the power of adaptation on the part of the visitors from\nAmsterdam, we should not overlook their adroitness in dealing with old\nwarhorses, like Giuseppe Verdi\u2019s \u201cOverture\u201d to La Forza del Destino and\nRichard Wagner\u2019s \u201cElsa\u2019s Procession to the Cathedral\u201d from Lohengrin.\nThe former is unfortunately not a favourite of mine, and I cannot help feeling\nthat the piece could not do justice to the great potential of this ensemble,\nwhile I found the Wagner excerpt more rewarding, the arrangement and the\nplaying being so convincing that I could almost hear the sound of the timpani, (which\nwas not there to start with!) <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The second half of the concert proved to be even\nmore challenging in terms of the range of styles and emotions. After the Festive\nOverture by Dimitri Shostakovich that gave the ensemble ample opportunity\nto demonstrate its virtuosity, the \u201cArrival of the Queen of Sheba\u201d from the oratorio\nSolomon by Georg Friedrich H\u00e4ndel reinforced the impression that a\nreally good brass ensemble could do just about everything that is normally the\ndomain of other instruments, including the strings. Again came another leap in\nterms of styles: the Maria de Buenos Aires Suite by Astor Piazzolla was\nan admirable attempt to capture the spirit of a music growing out of a native\nsoil, remote from Western Europe. (Although the composer himself had a solid\ntraining in classical music, what could really substitute for the inimitable\ncharm of the bandoneon that he used so well?) If Piazzolla was also at home in\njazz, which composer could ever rival George Gershwin in elevating jazz elements\nto the heights of classical music? The Concertgebouw Ensemble excelled in their\nGershwin Selection, revisiting some of those familiar melodies with\nadmirable freshness. Readers might chide me for being so liberal with my\nsuperlatives. But I am sure that my enthusiasm was shared by most members of\nthe audience.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Last but not least, I shall address the two\ncompositions that hail from the host country. The concert began with Narongrit Dhammabutra\u2019s\nSuvarnabhumi Prelude, especially composed for the guests from Amsterdam.\nA rousing piece of music, into which local elements are seamlessly woven, is\nsupported stylishly by Western instrumentation. If I could read the composer\u2019s\nmind, I would say that he might have said to himself that he had waited for so\nlong before a musical ensemble could produce for him the sound that he had been\ncarrying inwardly for some time. I must say in all frankness that very few Thai\nensembles have so far done full justice to Narongrit\u2019s creations, sometimes for\ntechnical reasons, and sometimes for lack of adequate rehearsal. The concert\nconcluded with H. M. Medley, an arrangement for brass ensemble of Rama\nIX\u2019s compositions by Vanich Potavanich, himself a distinguished trumpet player.\nIt was a fitting conclusion to an evening of musical bliss.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I have been describing up to now what I heard\nin the evening of November 28, but this review would be incomplete without an\naccount of what I saw on the stage. After each item, the 11 musicians\nwould shift their (standing) positions, taking turns to lead the ensemble and\npicking up different instruments (either of the same or of different category).\nThis they did with such amazing ease that made me wonder why they did not get\nmixed up at all. Those shifts and changes in styles that I referred to earlier\nwere so well matchedphysically by the movements on stage of\nthese ladies (sorry, there was only one lady among them, a British French horn\nplayer) and gentlemen from the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra. How lucky we were\nto be able to hearand see their performance!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

My final congratulations must go to the organizers\nof the concert. The mammoth Mahidol Sithakarn Auditorium, located 18 kilometers\naway from Bangkok in Salaya, was almost full. Among the audience were young\nmusic students, including those from military music schools, to which we should\nexpress our gratitude for the rebirth of classical music in Thailand in the\n1960s. Hopefully these able organizers would, on future occasions, lend a\nhelping hand to local musical ensembles that are doing their best in terms of\nperformance, but lack managerial skills to attract audiences. Let us face it:\nwe are getting better and better on the performing front, but the public can\nonly be attracted by way of PR stunts. A traditionally musical nation is going\ntone-deaf. It should not be.   <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Chetana Nagavajara Allow me to begin on a personal note. From 2008 to 2017, I was, once a year invited to the Free University Berlin as a Research Fellow, and I always timed my visit to coincide with the Berlin Music Festival in September, so that I […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7026,"featured_media":4163,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":true,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[153,1],"tags":[119,7],"class_list":["post-4162","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-153","category-1","tag-119","tag-7"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thaicritic.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4162","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thaicritic.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thaicritic.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thaicritic.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/7026"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thaicritic.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4162"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.thaicritic.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4162\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4165,"href":"https:\/\/www.thaicritic.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4162\/revisions\/4165"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thaicritic.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/4163"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thaicritic.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4162"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thaicritic.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4162"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thaicritic.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4162"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}