Time: 8 p.m., July 28, 1967.
Place: Nantu Movie Theater in Tainan, southern fort city of 17th century Dutch colonialists and site of the oldest temples in Taiwan.
Scene: Thirty-two children mill around the narrow apron in front of the movie screen, which has been covered with a curtain. They range in age from 5 to the late teens. They are dressed in navy blue pleated skirts or shorts, white short-sleeved blouses or shirts, and navy blue string bow ties. Some are sitting on folding metal chairs placed in a semi-circle around a foot-high box. Others are clustered around a rosy-cheeked, dimpled man of about 40 who is tuning one diminutive violin after another from the forest of instruments held up to him.
Helen Quach, China's top symphony conductor. (File photo)
Occasion: The year's first public performance by the BBB Children's Symphony Orchestra of Tainan. Miss Helen Quach, who was one of the winners of the Dimitri Mitropoulos international conducting contest and will be assistant conductor of the New York Philharmonic this year, is the guest conductor.
A bell sounds faintly from the wings and there is a rush to the folding chairs.
The legs of less than half the children touch the stage when they are seated; the first violinist comes to the waist of an average adult. Some swing their white-soxed feet back and forth, hitting their calves idly with violin bows on the upswing. A few hook their black oxfords or patent leather Mary Janes onto the top rungs of their chairs. One 6-year-old curly head sucks on a tuning peg of her violin. Two 9-year-old boys have a poking match with their bows. Three or four are looking at the audience. They point out sights of interest—a fat man, a woman with a bright head scarf, a blond lady.
Downbeat Time
Another bell rings and the house lights dim. Miss Quach looking at least five years younger than her 27 and wearing a street length black satin suit comes onstage. She steps onto the improvised podium. The children's faces are solemn and wide-eyed as the audience applauds the conductor's entrance.
Helen Quach runs her left hand through her boyishly cropped hair, raises her arms, poises them for an instant, then gives the downbeat.
The BBB Children's Symphony Orchestra responds with the lively strains of Handel's Musette.
From Handel, the young musicians bow, blow, and pluck their way professionally through the richness of Mozart's Piano Concerto in D minor, the playful toots and rattles of Haydn's Toy Symphony, and end with a crisp interpretation of Mozart's Eine Kleine Nachtmusik.
Time: One day later.
Place: A battered chartered bus en-route to a beach just outside Tainan.
Scene: The same youngsters, mostly bare foot and in swim togs, burdened with lunch baskets and plastic water bottles instead of violins and violas. A noisy group of 9 and 10-year-old boys in the front of the bus whistle, shout, and sing the latest rock 'n' roll tune to hit Tainan.
Occasion: An after-the-performance picnic, the regular reward for the BBB orchestra after climaxing weeks of endless rehearsals with a successful performance.
Julie Kao, doyen of the orchestra at 19, sits in the back of the bus, slightly aloof from her chattering fellow musicians.
"Miss Helen told us last night that when she closed her eyes, she could have sworn she was listening to the New York Philharmonic!"
Julie is the oldest of six Kao children with the BBB. A college sophomore, she looks some years older than on the stage, where she tones down her lipstick and wears a ribbon Alice-in-Wonderland-style through her shoulder-length hair. She is the orchestra's only double bass.
Music and Mischief
At family musicales, Julie is joined by her sisters: Kuo-hsiang, in Grade 11, on the piano; Man-hsiang, in Grade 10, on the viola; and An-hsiang, just out of primary school, on the violin. Both their younger brothers play the violin. Lo-sheng is 12 and Huei-sheng, the baby, is 9-going-on 10. Huei-sheng is the first violinist of the BBB. He also is acknowledged as the chief mischief-maker among the boys.
Their mother, Mrs. Kao Chung-ming, is one of the founders of the BBB Children's Symphony Orchestra. She still plays a prominent role by filling in for missing players. On her electric, a cross between a piano and an electric organ, Mrs. Kao simulates the sounds of bassoon, oboe, French horn, and percussion.
Her husband, one of Tainan's most prominent surgeons, acts as BBB manager. He finds rehearsal sites, arranges financial support, and keeps a supply of bubble gum and cookies for after-rehearsal treats.
"Daddy is a man of many enthusiasms," Julie says. "A few years ago, he was growing orchids. Then he filled the house with tropical fish. His hobby of the BBB orchestra has lasted longest-four years already."
The bus arrives at the beach and the children run for the sea, blowing up beach toys or baiting bamboo fishing rods as they go.
Mrs. Kao, a plump woman with a gentle voice, sighs and collapses on a rattan armchair to tell about the origins of the BBB.
The Three Best
Tseng Shao-ming (standing), the regular BBB conductor, is a self-taught musician. (File photo)
She put together a trio in 1963 with herself on piano; Tseng Shao-ming (the rosy-cheeked man who tunes the youngsters' instruments and is the regular conductor) on bass; and Sih Hsing-chieh on violin. They called themselves the BBB-not for Bach, Beethoven, and Brahms, hut for "Best! Best! Best!" "We wanted to be known as the three best musicians in the city," Mrs. Kao explains.
When Sih dropped out, Mrs. Kao enlisted the help of her children. All six Kao children had taken piano; none could play any other instrument. Tseng Shao-ming, a mechanical engineer, painstakingly taught them violin, viola, cello, and bass. Within a year, they had a week-end orchestra going along with Mrs. Kao and their teacher.
Tseng gave up his engineering career for music. Several years before he had taught himself to read music and play several instruments. He began reading up on the basics of conducting. Most of the youngsters in the BBB group begin their musical training with Tseng Shao-ming. After a year or two, they graduate to professional teachers. To the parents of BBB players, Tseng is known as the "Pied Piper"; to the children he is "Teacher".
Music for Fun
The word soon spread-music is fun! The Kao children were joined by others. In only two years, more than 60 children signed up for the BBB.
The number of players at any given time depends on how many drop out to prepare for rigorous high school or college entrance examinations. Some dropouts return once the examinations are over. Others must go away to college. During vacations, the orchestra swells as alumni return home for the holidays. The basic number stays around 35.
None of the children is a prodigy. Only one or two are planning careers in music. Julie Kao is studying interior decoration. Several want to take up medicine—four-fifths of them have fathers who are MDs. The first violinist watched his father in the operating theater and now is thinking of chemistry or biology instead.
Music, Julie explains, is an enjoyable pastime. "We spend a lot of time practicing and rehearsing because we like it."
Most of the children practice a couple of hours a day and take one lesson a week. They rehearse by sections twice a week and as an ensemble every Sunday. Concerts are held three to four times a year during the summer vacation and during the Chinese New Year season in January or February.
Broken Wrist
Kao Huei-sheng is sometimes a naughty boy. He is also an accomplished first-violinist. (File photo)
Kao Huei-sheng, the future chemist or biologist, spends three to four hours a day with his violin. He has a special arrangement with his fifth-grade teacher, possible because he usually ranks first in his class of 30. He is allowed to miss morning calisthenics and the daily assembly so as to put in an extra hour of practice. He is also exempted from homework as long as he remains on top in his class.
At the beach party, Huei-sheng shows up for lunch with a wrist bandage stained dingy gray by sand and sea. He broke his wrist playing soccer a month before the concert and missed the island wide violin competition in which he placed second last year. Hou liang-ping, a thin, wiry 10-year-old who sits behind Huei-sheng in the orchestra, was first this year. BBB violinists have swept second, third, and fourth prizes for the last three years.
In addition to the Tainan concert, BBB was heard in Taipei and Chiayi this summer. Reviews ranged from "They're so cute!" to "emotionally and intellectually far older musically than their years" and "crisp, rich sounds, with exceptional phrasing".
In Taipei, the BBB concert followed by only two days a couple of performances by the Taipei Municipal Symphony Orchestra. Comparisons were inevitable. Helen Quach has conducted all three Taiwan symphony orchestras and rates BBB above both the Taipei Municipal Symphony and the Taiwan Provincial Symphony. The difference, she says, lies in the children's enthusiastic response to the baton and in immediate recognition of what a piece of music is trying to convey.
She explains the shortcomings of the adult groups in these terms: "The grown-ups have to worry about making a living. Music to them is a matter of cramming enough students into their daily schedule to support their families. They don't have time to practice and rehearse as they should."
Both the children's and adult orchestras worry about the Jack of good instruments and teachers. The BBB group think they would sound better with some good string instruments and a set of timpani. Perhaps they would. But as Helen Quach says, "Right now, the BBB orchestra is the most talented symphonic group in Taiwan."
If these promising young musicians keep up their rate of improvement, they'll make a name for themselves with or without 300-year-old Stradivariuses.