This past fall the National Symphony Orchestra (NSO) was especially busy as it prepared for one of its biggest events in recent years. The orchestra, which can trace its origin to the Experimental Symphony Orchestra founded in 1986 under the Ministry of Education (MOE), was planning a 10-day European tour for November during which it was to give a total of five performances in France, Germany, Italy and Switzerland. There were great expectations for the NSO, which is known as the Taiwan Philharmonic abroad, ahead of its tour of the part of the world where Western classical music originated. “Last year we did a northeast Asia tour and more than 90 percent of the tickets were sold. We look forward to giving performances overseas this time very much,” says Paul Wang (王承禹), the NSO’s manager for public relations and development.
The tour was expected to attract classical music lovers partly because Lu Shao-chia (呂紹嘉), the Taiwan-born conductor who has led the NSO since 2010, is a prominent figure in the classical music world, both in Taiwan and in the West, according to Wang. At the same time, the 96 talented musicians that make up the largest orchestra in Taiwan should also be credited for the group’s fame. “This group is meant to be the top orchestra in Taiwan,” says Ho Kang-kuo (何康國), who is director of the Graduate Institute of Performing Arts at National Taiwan Normal University (NTNU), and was the orchestra’s deputy director from 2003 through July 2005.
The NSO is the artistic affiliate of Taipei’s National Chiang Kai-shek Cultural Center. As such, it enjoys the unique status of being the resident orchestra of the National Concert Hall, the most prominent facility of its kind in Taiwan. This means the musical group has the privilege of choosing performance dates two years in advance at the venue, which is governed by the cultural center. According to Ho, the NSO is one of the few orchestras in Taiwan that has its own performance space, another being the National Taiwan Symphony Orchestra (NTSO), which is based in Wufeng District in Taichung City, central Taiwan.
Strength of Public Orchestras
Actually, public orchestras have played a major role in the development of Western classical music in Taiwan, Ho says, which is quite different from the situation in, say, the United States, where private orchestras overwhelmingly dominate the scene. Today, both the NTSO and Taipei Symphony Orchestra (TSO), which are fully funded by the Ministry of Culture (MOC) and Taipei City Government respectively, are quite active and well known, in addition to the NSO, which was fully bankrolled by the MOE until 2005, when the percentage of funding contributed by the ministry decreased to between 55 and 60 percent. Members of these three groups are all full-time musicians, but those at the NTSO and TSO are essentially public servants, meaning that they enjoy additional benefits such as retirement pensions. Musicians at the NSO, which Ho calls a quasi-public organization, are employed via renewable contracts for terms of between two and four years.
With some 40 full-time contract musicians, the Kaohsiung Symphony Orchestra (KSO) in southern Taiwan can also be considered a public group because it receives financial aid from the Kaohsiung Philharmonic Cultural and Arts Foundation, which is funded by the Kaohsiung City Government. Due to its comparatively small size, the KSO often hires additional musicians on an ad hoc basis if it undertakes musical compositions written for a large orchestra.
“Globally, classical music is on the decline as concert goers in the West are mostly older people, but the trend is not so obvious in Taiwan partly because the government sector has been providing support,” Ho says.
Despite that general trend, several private orchestras in Taiwan are thriving, with the Taipei Philharmonic Orchestra (TPO) and Evergreen Symphony Orchestra (ESO) standing as two notable examples. The TPO draws from a talent pool of more than 100 musicians, who are employed on a temporary basis as performances are scheduled. The orchestra might not be able to promise a steady income, but it attracts musicians by its reputation for excellence. TPO president Thomas Lai (賴文福) says this owes much to the influence of American conductor Henry Mazer (1917–2002), who served as the group’s music director and conductor from its founding in 1985 until 2001, when he suffered a stroke. “His name prompted top musicians in Taiwan to take part [in the TPO] under his guidance,” Lai says of Mazer’s magnetic charm. The American served as an associate conductor of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, one of the top five orchestras in the United States, for 16 years before coming to Taiwan to help establish the TPO. Few orchestras in Taiwan have given more performances in Europe than the TPO, which is financed by donations from both individuals and enterprises.
Lu Shao-chia, the conductor of the 96-musician NSO since 2010 (Photo courtesy of National Symphony Orchestra)
“We don’t rely on playing music for this group to make a living. We stay with it because of a pure passion for music,” echoes Daniel Su (蘇顯達), the TPO’s concertmaster. A professor of music at Taipei National University of the Arts, Su has taken part in most of the orchestra’s major performances since its founding.
In contrast, the ESO, which consists of some 70 musicians, is the only private orchestra in Taiwan to have musicians who are all full-time salaried performers. Founded in 2001 by the Evergreen Group, one of Taiwan’s largest enterprises, the ESO is the most recently established large-scale local orchestra. In the beginning, the group built its identity around performances of Taiwanese ballads, such as Spring Breeze, which is often heard aboard aircraft belonging to Eva Air, a carrier owned by the Evergreen Group. “We also tried to familiarize Taiwanese people with orchestral music by including popular Taiwanese ballads in the repertoire, before introducing them to Western classical music,” ESO director Louis Chang (張逸士) says.
The group began touring overseas in 2004, and according to Chang has given the most performances abroad of any Taiwanese orchestra—including shows in 15 cities in mainland China. NTNU’s Ho says that the musical group undoubtedly plays a great role in promoting public relations for the Evergreen Group, which runs both air and sea transportation businesses. “The positive image the ESO creates for the enterprise is likely more influential than conventional advertisements that would cost as much as the ESO’s annual budget,” the scholar says. The enterprise provides the ESO with NT$60 million (US$2 million) annually, an amount that is mainly used to pay the musicians’ salaries. The orchestra must create additional income through ticket sales and corporate sponsorship to cover other expenses.
Compared with private orchestras, government-funded ones can afford to focus on a given mission without worrying about meeting financial goals. “Initially the government set up the [NTSO] with a specific intention,” Ho says of Taiwan’s oldest orchestra, which was founded in 1945. At the time, martial law was in place and Taiwan was confronted by a hostile mainland China. The NTSO was created with the aim of lifting public morale while offering an entertainment option in a society without much in the way of leisure activities. Patriotic music was an inevitable part of its repertoire, but of the other choices of music certain works were strictly out of bounds, the scholar adds, such as those by Dmitri Shostakovich (1906–1975), a Soviet musician and one of the most prominent figures in 20th-century music. Because he was a musician from a communist country, “his works couldn’t be performed in public until the 1980s,” Ho says.
Until the late 1960s, when the TSO came into being, the NTSO was the only public orchestra in Taiwan and remained a major channel through which Taiwanese were introduced to Western classical music. “The group usually drew a huge amount of attention when it arrived at a place to offer locals an opportunity to listen to live music,” says Chang Su-pao (張書豹), the director of the NTSO, which took its current name in 1999.
As times have changed, the orchestra’s music no longer plays a political role, but it still aspires to enrich the cultural life of local residents and popularize classical music. Today, the NTSO continues to give performances throughout Taiwan, even though audience turnout is sometimes quite low. The practice is in line with the current MOC policy of promoting art and cultural literacy across Taiwan, and the group will explore rural venues in 2014 with the addition of NT$5 million (US$167,000) from the ministry on top of its existing annual budget.
Since 2008, the NTSO has organized an annual contest for promising Taiwanese composers under the age of 45 in hopes of boosting their careers. This year four finalists were to compete at the end of November, with each composition performed by the NTSO in a free public concert. The winner of the event was to receive NT$200,000 (US$6,660) in prize money, and the NTSO will produce a CD featuring compositions by the finalists. From 2008 to this year, more than 40 compositions have been recorded and released in CD form. “Government-funded groups have a responsibility to do what private ones cannot [because of financial constraints],” Ho says, “such as providing a platform for little-known, but upcoming Taiwanese composers to have their works heard.”
An NSO bassoon player introduces the instrument to visitors to the National Concert Hall as part of the orchestra’s effort to cultivate interest in classical music in Taiwan. (Photo courtesy of National Symphony Orchestra)
Search for New Works
Similarly, in 2009 the NSO started to commission new works by young composers. In the first four years of the program, five composers were selected annually, with the number increasing to nine composers this year. Actually, one of the nine compositions in the repertoire for the NSO’s European tour in November was a result of the program. Titled Breaking Through by Yen Ming-hsiu (顏名秀), the work portrays the construction of Taiwan’s longest road tunnel, which passes through Snow, or Xue, Mountain in northern Taiwan and took 15 years to complete. It was to be accompanied by Chinese Songs for Soprano and Orchestra by Chien Nan-chang (錢南章), the other composition from Taiwan scheduled for European audiences, as well as pieces by Western masters including Richard Strauss (1864–1949) and Ludwig van Beethoven (1770–1827).
The NSO also launched a project to produce a series of albums—each devoted to the work of a different Taiwanese composer—about 10 years ago. To date, 15 CDs have been released, including those featuring the work of established composers Ma Shui-long (馬水龍) and Hsiao Tyzen (蕭泰然).
There is some debate about whether orchestral groups do better as public or private organizations. The NTSO’s Chang Su-pao contends that the stable income offered by public orchestras allows members of his group to stay focused on their careers. At the same time, he concedes that the compensation system can be problematic in public orchestras because the musicians’ salaries, like those for other public servants, are determined according to seniority. Although performers in such orchestras undergo regular evaluations, “the salary a musician receives is based on their academic background and seniority in the group,” Chang Su-pao says. By contrast, musicians in private groups, who are employed on temporary contracts, are under constant pressure to improve their performance if they hope to take part in future events, TPO’s Lai says. Meanwhile, Conrad Hsing (邢子青), senior producer in the Program Department of Taipei-based radio station Philharmonic Radio, says it is the role of the conductor that is the decisive factor in a group’s performance, not the public or private structure. Musicians in Taiwan’s major orchestras are doing fairly well overall, he says, so “if a group is lousy, it’s the conductor that’s to blame, not the musicians.”
Despite any differences, both public and private orchestras in Taiwan are quite aware of the need to broaden their audience bases. With that in mind, in 2005 the TSO began to give live performances at a downtown concert hall exclusively for fifth graders from schools in Taipei City as part of the city government’s art education project. The NSO began to organize guided tours of the National Concert Hall in 2009 for grade school students during which they learn about musical instruments and attend rehearsals of the NSO. In addition, every year music scholars deliver lectures about classical music at 10 to 12 high schools on behalf of the orchestra. Participating high school students are allowed to attend an NSO concert for the discounted price of just NT$100 (US$3.30). “The domestic market is relatively small, so we need to try hard to unlock its potential,” says public relations manager Wang. To reach those who cannot attend concerts, the NSO has commissioned two radio stations serving listeners in Taipei and Taichung respectively to broadcast the orchestra’s recordings for one hour every Sunday night.
Meanwhile, orchestras have started to embrace pop culture. In June this year, the TPO staged the Kohei Tanaka Anime Concert at the National Concert Hall, which featured scores for animations and video games created by the Japanese composer. Tanaka himself showed up as guest conductor and piano player at the concert, along with three other Japanese musicians. Three months later, the ESO gave a performance titled Pixar in Concert at the same venue. That show included scores from the movies Toy Story, Up and Monsters Inc., with large screens displaying part of each animated film in the background.
As to the next generation of classical musicians, supply obviously surpasses demand. According to Ho, there are around 20 colleges in Taiwan that have set up music-related departments, and together produce some 1,100 graduates majoring in Western classical music every year. Openings for musicians at orchestras are relatively rare, however. At least in this regard Taiwan is no exception, Su notes, as musicians the world over compete fiercely for positions in orchestras, especially the top institutions. But one should not be too preoccupied with money or fame when studying music, he says. “You’ll give up halfway if you have such an attitude. You need a little foolishness to keep moving down this road,” he adds.
The Taipei Philharmonic Orchestra rehearses at the Guangzhou Opera House in Guangzhou, mainland China, in 2012. (Photo courtesy of Taipei Philharmonic Orchestra)
Fierce Competition
Tsai Ping-chang (蔡秉璋), a young NSO viola player in his late 20s, believes the competition is even fiercer today. “I grew up in a time when Taiwan’s economy began to take off. That was when private music lessons became more affordable for average families and the number of children learning music started to increase. Those children are competing with each other today,” says the musician, who began his musical studies in the early 1990s at the age of 7 by learning to play the piano.
The NSO, for example, is unlikely to offer a single opening for a year, Wang says. Nonetheless, in order to encourage young musicians, the group teamed up with three private foundations in Taiwan to establish the NSO Orchestra Academy in September 2012. Recruits must be music students and they are given the chance to make significant progress in their ability by attending the NSO’s rehearsals on a regular basis in order to improve their listening skills. Some of the top students even have the chance to sit among the musicians during the practice sessions. The academy participants must also stage a concert of their own. “All this is important, because individually Taiwanese musicians are quite good, but they need more training in playing harmoniously with other musicians,” Wang adds.
In the academy’s first year, 45 young musicians were selected from nearly 300 candidates and admitted for one year. The number of invitees increased to 47 this year, with the newly recruited students being allowed to take part in the program for two years. An additional benefit is that the NSO gives priority to academy participants when it needs associate musicians to supplement its ranks for large-scale performances.
In southern Taiwan, a KSO affiliate group consisting of teenagers was established in 2004. That orchestra has since given at least two concerts for which it sells tickets every year, in addition to numerous free performances at local venues throughout Kaohsiung City. With nearly 80 young musicians, the orchestra claims to be the largest of its kind in Taiwan.
Overall, Hsing says that local orchestras have made great progress during the past 20 years partly because many of today’s musicians have overseas experience, either through studying abroad or having spent time performing with groups overseas. Audiences in Taiwan are becoming pickier too, which inevitably motivates orchestras to strive for higher quality performances. “I’ve found young people in Taiwan are increasingly interested in classical music, which is generally deemed the preserve of older people in the West,” he says. The radio producer suggests that the use of classical music in television advertisements, movies and new media is boosting renewed interest in the genre.
From the founding of the NTSO decades ago, to the emergence of the ESO as Taiwan’s first full-time private orchestra, Taiwan is becoming fertile ground for a resurgence of classical music.
Write to Oscar Chung at mhchung@mofa.gov.tw