Helen Quach Is Only 25 And 5 Feet 1, But This Bundle of Dynamite Is On Her Way to Stature As the Top Symphonic Conductor of Her Sex
It was cold in Seoul the evening of last February 23. A heavy snow had fallen the night before. But warm feelings of spring were in the hearts of 3,000 lovers of Beethoven and Liszt as they sat entranced in handsome Citizens’ Hall.
Playing for the full house was the Seoul Philharmonic Orchestra. Wielding the baton and with no score on the music rack was a petite Chinese guest conductor in a businesslike black jacket and street-length skirt. Miss Helen Quach was vigorous in her conducting—at times fiery—despite an illness that had kept her in bed earlier in the day.
In the opening work, Liszt’s symphonic poem Les Preludes, the attractive Miss Quach, who is only 25, moved the music from climax to rousing climax at an exhilarating pace, but always keeping a tight rein on the big orchestra.
People long have ceased to attach to the Liszt piece the philosophical and poetic significance that the composer thought he was putting into it. But it can be listened to with pleasure simply as “a string of good if rather corny tunes all fancied up with rhetorical orchestration”. “From this point of view,” an American critic observed, “Miss Quach’s interpretation was a rousing success.”
Writing in the Korea Times of February 25, James Wade said the Lalo Cello Concerto, “one of the dullest pieces in any soloist’s repertory” gave him a chance to observe the conductor's technique without being distracted by the music.
“In general,” Wade said, “Miss Quach knows just what she wants from an orchestra and how to get it. Her gestures are precise and economical; she holds back physical emphasis for major climaxes. Cues are unobtrusively effective. The sudden staccato chords punctuating the cello line, a trademark of the concerto's first movement, were brought in cleanly and accurately; the sentimental tune of the Andantino sang nicely and with restraint; the scherzando section had light-fingered wit and cohesion.”
Miss Quach was “doing the right thing” as a conductor and “the communication was clear and forthright enough,” Wade added.
Beethoven’s Pastoral Symphony, which followed the intermission, “led off with a vigorous and carefully inflected first movement,” Wade noted. “The audience appeared immersed in the snug atmosphere of springtime in the countryside,” the Korea Herald Weekly observed.
Prejudice Ended
Conducting a symphony orchestra is not familiar work for a woman. But in the opinion of Wade, Miss Quach “proved capably and confidently ... that any prejudice existing against women orchestra conductors is untenable.”
Nicolai Malko congratulates Helen in Sydney. (File photo)
“The old-time feminists were right,” the critic wrote. “There is no field in which women cannot achieve success; except, perhaps, fatherhood.”
Wade went on to say that it was the first time he had seen a woman conductor in action at a live concert. “One reads about such a lady active in Canada,” he wrote, “and there is the Boston Opera Jill-of-all-trades; and of course Nadia Boulanger, the grand dragon of all composition teachers, will conduct when she takes a notion (but Mme. Boulanger, even at 79, is the kind of woman who could probably succeed in becoming a riveter or an ornithologist or a fry cook, if she took the notion).”
The American critic recalled that his own composition teacher was strongly opposed to the idea of women conductors, “although she herself was a woman composer and as such had been considered quite a pioneer in the period around 1910.” Wade continued:
“Perhaps the inertia-gap between generations accounts for the fact that only now does it seem to have begun to be possible for a meteor in skirts like Miss Quach to appear on the musical horizon with every prospect of becoming an established star in the orchestral firmament.”
Miss Quach (or Kuo, in the Mandarin pronunciation) was born of Chinese parents in Saigon on July 4, 1940. It is a singular coincidence that a girl child of such independent-mindedness should have been born on the 164th anniversary of American Independence. This same year saw Japan’s occupation of Vietnam. Three years earlier the Marco Polo Bridge incident had plunged China into the eight-year War of Resistance against Japan. Helen’s forceful attitude toward music is appropriate to the times in which she was born and brought up.
When Helen was 10 years old, her family moved to Sydney, Australia. There she was graduated at the age of 19 from the Sydney Conservatorium of Music with a diploma in pianoforte and teaching. In 1958, the year before graduation, she had competed against 33 other candidates and won a scholarship to study conducting under Russian emigre conductor Nicolai Malko, then musical director of the Sydney Symphony Orchestra. Helen worked under his strict supervision for three years. She is the only person outside Russia to have had such a long period of training under the late Maestro Maiko.
Debut in Sydney
Helen Quach made her conducting debut with the Sydney Symphony Orchestra in 1960 and won these comments from the press:
* The concert suite The Love of Three Oranges by Prokofiev emerged without a feather of its irridescent plumage misplaced.—Sydney Herald.
* She directed the orchestra with the assurance of a seasoned conductor.—The Sun.
* She had a delicate balance of tone. The audience clapped, cheered, and stamped. She deserved the applause—Daily Mirror.
* At 20, Helen Quach is getting rave notices from Sydney’s hardboiled critics.— Courier Mail, Brisbane.
In August of 1964, Miss Quach attended master classes in Taorrmina, Italy, under two internationally famous conductors: Carlo Zecchi and Sir John Barbirolli. She was awarded a full scholarship. Her unusual talent, demonstrated during the course and in her successful conducting of the Sinfonia Siciliana, won her the comment “a conductor with inborn musicality” from Italy’s Il Messaggero. She also won these comments from her instructors:
Diminutive Miss
In the words of Nikolai Malko, “Helen Quach is a most remarkable young conductor possessing wonderful authority and I expect that she will achieve a great deal with her gifted ability.” “An excellent musician of brilliant future,” said Carlo Zecchi. Sir John encouraged her with these words: “All my good wishes to your great talent.”
Miss Quach conducts without the use of score. (File photo)
At 25, Helen still looks like a teenager with her bobbed hair and her slightness of stature (5 feet 1). Yet since Taormina, she has conducted such other major orchestras as the Symphony of America in New York, the Danish Radio Orchestra in Copenhagen, and others in Taipei, Seoul, and Tokyo. She won an award at an international conducting contest in Denmark.
Miss Quach came to Taiwan for the first time late in 1965. Her visit came as a pleasant surprise; few free Chinese had heard of her activities abroad. She was an immediate sensation as guest conductor of the Ministry of National Defense Band, the Taiwan Provincial Symphony Orchestra, and the newly organized Taipei Municipal Orchestra.
Many Honors
The Chinese Ministry of Education gave her a citation and a gold medal. She was chosen as one of the “ten outstanding young women” of the Republic of China and honored by the Rotary Club of Taipei West and Taipei's China Daily News. Along with four men, she was selected as an outstanding overseas Chinese youth of 1966 and honored by the Overseas Chinese Affairs Commission on Youth Day March 29.
Taipei musicians and music lovers have been impressed by Helen Quach’s sincerity and wholehearted dedication to music. She, in turn, was surprised by the determination of Chinese musicians to bring great music to the people under difficult conditions.
For centuries, the Chinese have considered music as an expression of discipline and an example of constructive conformity. But the Chinese of Taiwan are not yet conditioned to Western symphonic works. Musicians have to earn their living by doing something else. They cannot channel all their energies into polishing their skills.
After Miss Quach’s 10-day visit to Seoul, she went to Tokyo to conduct the Yomiuri Nippon Symphony Orchestra. She plans to re-visit Japan in mid-May and then go to the United States as Chinese representative at an international music conference in Interlachen, Michigan. She has received invitations to conduct concerts in Hongkong, Singapore, Manila, and for Yomiuri National TV in Tokyo.
A medal and citation from Chinese Education minister Yen Chen-hsing are among the honors showered upon Miss Helen Quach in Taipei. (File photo)
She will return to Taiwan in the fall to take charge of the Taiwan Symphony Orchestra for a year during the absence of its musical director, Prof. David C. L. Tai She also will direct the mixed chorus of the Taiwan Provincial Normal University, where Professor Tai heads the music department.
Taiwan music circles expect long forward strides in symphonic music and important gains in popularity. Musicians look forward to the experience and the challenge. Unlikely as it might seem, China may be in the process of producing the first truly great woman conductor in the history of music.