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It’s day three in Kuala Lumpur, courtesy of UBS sponsorship, and we’re all about ready to come home now, in spite of the fact that here is just so nice. Very hot and humid, and terrific food to be had, whether it’s at the street vendors on Bukit Bintang or the many Malaysian and Indian restaurants waiting to be discovered. I had an Indian meal and will have to go back to the same place today for lunch, because it really did live up to ‘Best In The Universe’, and there’s a few things I didn’t have the chance to try. And last night I ate Stingray for the first time, and it was wonderful. Thanks to violinist Ning Kam, for that experience.
This blog has been fun to do, I just want to say … there are those for whom touring is an ongoing familiarisation with the many places we visit, and revisit, and some remember this street or that street or restaurant, or hotel, and where the best museums are and so on. I confess to being less savvy, and I often come back to a previously visited place, and it’s as though I’ve not been there before at all. But this blog will serve as a souvenir of the Far East tour, and perhaps, if we come back, I’ll remember a thing or two.
As for the concerts, well, I’m looking forward to the Berlioz tonight, not least because it’s the last of this little patch, and there are only so many performances in close proximity of great pieces on which a fresh perspective can be sustained, personally speaking. Although hearing trumpeter Maurice Murphy soar over the melodies in the Mahler time and again this trip is an inspiration. The way Maurice, and the rest of the brass play the Star Wars encore night after night, (and this has become an enduring feature of the tour), is no less incredible, and makes me proud to be a part of the orchestra.
There’s been much to talk about. But time is not always forthcoming, and I’ve tried to paint in broad strokes with these ramblings, to give a sense of what it’s like to be on tour with the LSO. I hope it’s been an enjoyable read. I spoke to Sue Mallet last night, between courses of food, and she was curious as to what I was commenting on and reporting, and whether there were pictures of the people I had mentioned. I think she may have been hinting that I might like to include one or two of her, which accordingly have been kindly supplied by Hannah. It seems that whatever I’ve managed to go out and do on this trip, Sue’s done with bells on…. or snakes, I should say….. as well as looking after the orchestra. Perhaps next time she can find time to do the blog as well!
I’m tentatively wondering about the concert tonight, it being the last of the tour, and whether Daniel will have recovered emotionally from his football team going out last night against AC Milan. I know a few people were planning to stay up to watch the game, but, not being a football fanatic, unlike so many of my colleagues, I opted for an early mini-bar-I-mean-bed.
The concert in Taipei, which is sponsored by UBS, takes place in an enormous hall with a pagoda style roof, and in front of not only the audience seated inside, but a few thousand others watching a simultaneous relay to the screens outside. And if you ever wondered the extent to which the LSO enjoys celebrity status on tour, this is it. The concert goes well, the Berlioz reaching new levels of fantasy and breadth, and the soloist, Lang Lang playing another fluent and sparkling Mozart concerto. He’s a great communicator, and really seems to enjoy the rapport with Harding and the orchestra. After the Berlioz we play Star Wars. And as this is possibly the very last time Maurice will play the famous Title Theme, there is a real sense of occasion about it. The roar of the audience as we finish is one of the reasons I enjoy this life so much, and we make our way off stage, and up to the balcony of the concert hall overlooking the square, which is packed with people, and they cheer as we wave.
The following day is a must for doing the Taipei 101 Tower, (the tallest building on Earth), and by taking the worlds fastest lift, we reach the top in just 37 seconds. That’s the best part of 509 metres! Wow. Nice view from up here, I must say….and it seems I’m not the only one to feel a bit dizzy, as there is discernable movement up here. There would be a lot more, were it not for the stabilising effect of a huge steel ball suspended by cables, and bolted into the structure of the tower. It does have a name, but at the time of writing this, it escapes my memory, I’m afraid.
Another splendid concert; Beethoven 9 with the impressive National Chorus of Taiwan, and Frank Peter Zimmermann performing Mozart’s D major violin concerto. And again with this flash encore…the audience warms up after this…and we go out to the balcony, and this time it’s a sea of umbrellas cheering, because of the rain.
The rest of the evening is short, because we have to leave at 5am for Malaysia. This is a bit of a drag, but the entire orchestra manages to get up nonetheless.
Really, the praise has to go to Miriam and Sue, who take care of all the things that would otherwise be overlooked, like unpaid room bills, and organising 80 or so people on and off coaches all over the place. That’s not the half of it, but I thought they deserved a mention!
I’m now looking out of the bus window at the twin Petronas towers, the impressive feature of the Kuala Lumpur skyline. That is to be our next port of call, and I’m looking forward to having a wander round the roadside markets where they do street food, and later on, there’s a plan to find the best curry place in the universe, which is supposed to be here, according to a reliable source.
Guangzhou, Hong Kong and Taipei
Just North of Hong Kong, and a handy stop over for the LSO’s next concert of the tour, Guangzhou is a bustling, steamy city, with much in the way of colonial architecture, and huge shopping centres. We go for Italian food, in a nearby restaurant that’s been recommended by our hotel.
Tonight’s concert is the last of the tour of China, and of the Rolls-Royce sponsorship, as tomorrow we are off to Hong Kong, where the concerts are sponsored by UBS. The concert itself is notable for the audience participation, in the form of someone’s instant replay of the end of the second movement of the Berlioz, before the reverberations had had time to fade, presumably on their camcorder. Later on, in the slow movement, (and bear in mind the pastoral nature of this), a mobile phone gives us some sort of woodland bird-song! Horn player, Angela Barnes says it sounds like her washing machine coming to the end of its spin cycle….it’s difficult not to corpse sometimes.
After the concert, by way of a celebration, Rolls-Royce has thrown a magnificent party on board a boat which takes us on a steady trip up and down the river. It is lit with yellow lanterns, and there’s fabulous finger food, and speeches are made, and it’s congratulations all round. In fact, it’s sad to leave, as the boat pulls in to the pier. But, lovely though it is, many of us are starving after a long evening, and all the calories burnt in the concert, and the only place open this late is the McD’s next to the hotel. So that about does the trick.
Hong Kong is a breathtaking place, day and night, and, though it’s wet when we arrive, it’s slightly humid, so wandering the streets feels breezy and warm. Where we stay is basically a huge shopping centre, and the idea of going to buy a razor fills me with dread, because I’ve been completely lost in there before, with far less specific things on the agenda. There are just so many floors of shops. I just hope I can get away with my unshaven look for tonight’s reception, again at the swanky China Club, over at the Mandarin hotel. This is fun to get to because you can get the ferry across the harbour. But most of us go by bus, hoping to do the boat later, on the way back. It’s a fantastic evening, with so many dishes, including Peking Duck, which seems to be a favourite with most people. Later in the evening, David Tang himself gets on the piano to play.
The next day is free, until the rehearsal and concert, so I hop over the harbour to Hong Kong island to meet a friend who lives there, and wants to show me around a bit. I spend a brilliant afternoon among the hundreds of restaurants and street markets, marvelling at the vibe of the place. We end up at Victoria Peak, which is the top of the mountain, basically, and has the kind of view a camera can’t really capture. Nonetheless, it’s there in the slideshow, to give you an idea.
At the time of my writing I’m looking at the tallest building in the world, from my hotel room in Taipei, where we arrived this afternoon, after another early start. I’ve spent the afternoon wandering round the electronic markets looking for bargains. I’m now taking full advantage of the lack of a concert this evening, by staying in, and having an early one.
During the Orchestra’s stay in Beijing it took part in a conducting masterclass with students from the Central Conservatory of Music, led by Daniel Harding. Three students conducted the Orchestra in Dvorak’s Ninth Symphony.
The masterclass was filmed by China Central Television, and the report can be viewed on their website: http://www.cctv.com/english/20070425/100651.shtml
Tianjin
Our last concert in the region is an excursion from Beijing to Tianjin. This involves a coach journey, with a very sweet girl from Tianjin, who tells us a bit about the city, and is incredibly nervous at being in the presence of such well renowned artists! (That’s what she said, honestly…..)
We arrive hungry, and there’s food laid on, and we rehearse two Chinese pieces, one of which is the encore – Good News From Beijing. This is a bit like their version of the Radetsky March, and goes down very well. As does the beer that’s provided for the bus journey home, the effects of which include a timely gathering at the largest ‘public convenience’ I have ever seen.
On to Shanghai, and the sheer scale of the place is overwhelming, even for a Londoner! As we arrive here it is very wet, and the coaches pull up outside a brand new hotel, The Parkview. It’s a very nice hotel, but getting something to eat is not as easy as anticipated, because being located for easy access to the concert hall, we’re not close to many restaurants. Besides this, it’s raining, and the idea of going exploring isn’t that appealing. In fact, there’s a place in the foyer, but it takes over an hour for food to arrive. So by the time some of us have eaten, there’s only just enough time for a restorative lie down before the concert.
The concert hall, just a five minute walk from the hotel, is an impressive building, a glass shell displaying the wall of the auditorium. The audience here is well behaved and appreciative!
Afterwards, we go off in search of something to eat, but find most places closed. There are many locals who come to us smiling and begging, and who are extremely persistent, which leads to frayed tempers, especially with the rain’s constant drizzle, and being lost….eventually, our group splits in two, one half giving up in favour of the ‘Golden Arches’, which appears to be the only place open. The rest of us take another cab ride, asking the driver to take us somewhere, anywhere, where we can get something. He obliges us, just before we’re about to give up too, by dropping us on a street that looks a little Soho ish. I don’t know what it is they bring us, from our pointing at pictures on a laminated menu, but it doesn’t resemble much that’s familiar, either by look or by taste. We eat a bit, and wash it down with the local wine, served in tumblers. That tastes odd too. So we leave the place, not quite knowing whether our hosts are laughing with us, at our hapless misfortune, or at us, having merrily fleeced us of our money.
The bar at the hotel serves as a welcome homecoming, at any rate, and sleep, eventually, seems like a good idea.
The Next Day
Wow. What a buzz. My adrenaline surges as we career down sunny roads towards the area the Yu Gardens. The weather has cleared, or perhaps it is my head. Immediately, as Laurent and I step out onto a bustling street downtown, I am approached by a man selling watches, jackets, anything he can to get my interest, actually. We check out the little backstreets, and come to the main tourist area, complete with its very own Starbucks. I mean really! Laurent tells me there’s a tea garden with rockeries and trees that he saw in the rain, but wants to see again, so we do that. Very pretty. We have lunch at a fast food Dim Sum place, which counters the effects of last night’s fiasco. A day like this wouldn’t be complete without a bit of a haggle, so we buy various bits and pieces for those back home, and I head back to the hotel.
The LSO is welcomed to Beijing, and the next leg of its Far East tour, in the form of a fantastic banquet at the China Club, generously hosted by David Tang. The whole orchestra along with our sponsors in China, Rolls-Royce, turn out looking very smart, after a bit of R&R from the flight. We enter the China Club through a series of courtyards and wooden gates, lit by red paper lanterns. The reception is really classy, and we go into the dining area for the food, which is as tasty as it looks, and served in small dishes which they change for each course. I’m glad not to be doing the washing up. Amazing hospitality, and superb food, as I said, and a speech from Kathryn McDowell which brings the evening to an end.
The next day I’m up early to visit the Great Wall of China. The last time the Orchestra came to Beijing there was a trip to the Wall organised, which, sadly, I missed. I couldn’t get up that morning, as I remember, and felt suitably and appropriately sheepish about it, seeing that almost the entire orchestra had made it, and had spectacular photos to show for it. Of course, I then had the embarassing task of having to explain to my folks back home of the squandered opportunity. So this is my chance to make amends!
There are two separate trips to the Great Wall planned for today, one of which starts off considerably earlier than the other. This involves a bike ride and a bit of a hike, so not wishing to miss out, I opt for it, and at 7.30am find myself in a mini bus, bereft of the hamper of power bars, hiking shoes and other suggested necessities indicated on the sheet of paper I am handed by Leo, who is our tour guide for the day. Never mind. I’ve got my IXUS camera, and I’m with friends, including Tom Goodman and Laurent, which is a good thing, because I’ve come out without my money again….
An hour and a half later, we pull into a lay-by, and get on bikes, assembling for the first of many group photos taken throughout the day. These get a bit silly later on, with our tour guide at one point having about seven cameras dangling from his arm, so that then everyone can go home and email the same picture to each other!
Riding a bike is fun. It’s really true that you never forget, but the question is, do you wear a helmet? I begrudgingly try to fit one on, but it pinches on my stubble (I haven’t shaved this morning), and that hurts, so I decide against it in the end. It’s about 20 kilometres to the site where we are joining the wall, and there’s a fair bit of struggling uphill, but after that, and for the majority of the journey, we’re flying with the wind in our faces. We pass through a couple of tiny villages on the way, where Chinese people with gnarled hands and faces look on. Sometimes smiling, other times looking either vaguely bewildered at our presence, or weary of it, I can’t tell really, they don’t mind us taking their photos. At least I hope they don’t. I don’t feel too bad about it, however when we arrive at a roadside cafe, for a very nice meal organised as part of the day trip, and are hounded by several locals desperate to sell us guide books and souvenirs. And also what look like sticks of dynamite, in racks of ten or twenty. Like elongated milk bottle holders. I’m confused by this, until by their persistence they manage to flog one to Tom for a few washers, and all is explosively apparent. As we walk across the top of a dam to explore the other side, where a part of the Great Wall begins, they let them off from their side. They explode what I assume to be a reasonably safe distance above our heads, although we all duck suddenly, and have the remains of the cardboard tubes fall down around us! What a bizarre thing to sell at the roadside to tourists. They also sell boxes of firecrackers, and Laurent and Rinat think that might be a laugh, so they buy a few cartons each and start chucking them about. It is funny, I have to say.
We go back to the cafe for lunch, which is rather like a roadside version of the China Club meal, in that they bring dish after dish of delicious freshly prepared vegetables, meat and a really good fish done in cumin. But unlike last night we keep our plates beween courses!
The hike along the Great Wall is extraordinary. Incredibly steep in places, the view changes at every turn, and becomes more incredible the higher we get. The wall is restored by locals who in times past had taken stones from the remains in order to build their houses, we are told. So there is a mixture of quite new looking stone and mortar and much older crumbling stairways and arches, punctuated along the way by the watchtowers at which the many sentries would have sat in order to guard the border, to keep the Mongols out. The views are stunning, despite there being a fair bit of haze and mist, or perhaps it is smog from the city. The pictures speak for themselves.
The bus picks us up, and we get back to the hotel in Beijing with enough time to shower and take a quick nap before the concert. My legs are tired, but it’s been a thrilling day. Thanks to Jez for organising the trip.Any sense that the Chinese audience is a bit lethargic at the beginning of the concert is quickly dispelled by their response to the Beethoven violin concerto, again played by Zimmermann with finesse and a beauty of tone which has us smiling throughout. He plays an encore by Pagannini that is spellbinding. The second half is the Symphonie Fantastique by Berlioz, which certainly doesn’t seem to suffer any side effects from over half the orchestra’s excursions during the day, and is warmly and enthusiastically received by the Beijing audience.
Sorry for the gap in blog entries everyone! Tom has emailed me from Beijing to say that he’s having trouble logging in from there so hasn’t been able to post since they were in Japan! Hopefully he’ll be back online soon and can update us on the Chinese leg of the tour.
Jo Johnson
LSO Website Manager
The concert halls in Tokyo are spectacular. Not least of these is the Tokyo Opera City, where we are playing two concerts thanks to the generous support of UBS. The first thing that strikes you when you walk on stage is the sense of space. Only when you look out into the hall do you appreciate the scale of it. It’s like a huge wooden cathedral, drawing your eyes upwards into the massive acoustic chamber. The sound in the hall when it’s empty is incredibly lively, and we spend our rehearsal making the necessary adjustments to suit the hall, used as we are to the Barbican. The sound goes out as though amplified, and as we play through Mahler 5 I’m trying to imagine what difference it will make having the audience in. We play through Star Wars, a possible encore for tonight’s concert. It is decided later, however, that this may be too bombastic following the Mahler, and it is dropped. The first concert goes well. Having an audience in the hall makes such a difference to the sound, especially when it is a full house like this, and the Japanese audience responds enthusiastically. Concert-goers here are generally very polite, so it’s a result to hear discernable shouts of approval for both halves, the first of which is rounded off nicely by a ‘Chinese Tango’ played by the flambuoyantly gifted Lang Lang, as an encore after his impressive Mozart piano concerto performance. The second performance the following day is also notable, not least for the performance of the Beethoven violin concerto by Franz Peter Zimmerman, who is one of my favourite violinists, but also for a very fresh performance of Dvorak’s New World Symphony. Tonight we are lavishly rewarded, by the way, with a reception thrown by one of the Orchestra’s corporate sponsors, with much food and drink. I am particularly pleased as I haven’t eaten since breakfast, having lost a mid-day struggle with jet lag which left me fairly ineffective at getting lunch in. Tomorrow we leave at the crack of dawn for Beijing, where we will spend the next few days, beginning the Rolls-Royce/LSO Tour of China. I’d better get some sleep therefore. Goodbye Japan.
It’s nice to get up and do something on a free day, but always a bit of a dilemma, as free days are often great opportunities for sheer laziness, and lie-ins. But jet-lag is a good thing sometimes, as it solves this dilemma by jolting you wide awake in the middle of the night…so by the time morning comes you’re glad to have an excuse to leave the hotel room.
So this morning we are meeting in the lobby to take a train out of Tokyo to the south, to a place called Hakone. I get down to meet Laurent Quenelle, a fellow violinist, who is talking to a friend of ours called Kyoko. She comes in very useful during the course of the day, as it turns out, as she lives in Tokyo, so she knows her way around! Joined by Chi -Yu Mo, Tom Goodman and Sarah Quinn, we start out on the metro, grabbing some coffee on the way. After some deliberation about whether to get a day pass, or just to pay for our transport and various attractions along the way, we opt for the former, so we have to do as much as possible to get our money’s worth.
So we arrive at the Open – Air museum at Hakone, which is a spectacular exhibition of sculptures set in a beautiful park, with spring on the agenda, judging by the scattering of cherry blossom on the trees. Also there is a Picasso museum here, showing a small collection of his lithographs and sketches, as well as an abundance of painted plates and bowls etc. This sounds like a travel guide, but it’s well worth a visit, if you find yourself in the area.
After the museum, we’re all in need of refreshment, and I have a sugar low from working my way through the packet of minstrels I have with me for sustenance, and we go in search of something more sensible to eat. We end up in Gora, where the speciality is Gyoza, but end up going for noodles and tempura in a small but busy restaurant, where I can’t decide what to eat, and the dishes look small, so I order 2, but that turns out to be too much, and I’m afraid I can’t manage it all. As we leave the restaurant there is a lorry covered in lanterns playing music. The young people inside are playing traditional Japanese chamber music, Kyoko tells us, normally played at festivals, but she thinks they put it on for the tourists, which I think is very nice of them.
Onwards and upwards, we take the funicular railway to the cable car, which is a switchback railway…it sort of zig-zags up the mountain, and there are two drivers, one at each end, who stop the train at each change of direction, and get off to swap places. It’s quite a procedure. The cable car then takes us to the summit, where the air is thick with sulphur from the springs coming up into pools in the rocks. Here you can buy boiled eggs with black shells from the sulphur, and apparently eating these eggs adds seven years to your life. This is lucky because we are warned that breathing the fumes is extremely hazardous to the respiration, and can be fatal. So most of us eat at least one egg….I mean….. how could we not, under these circumstances?
Back down to the cable car, and there is an idea to take a boat across a lake with spectacular views of Mount Fuji, and another to go into a spa and bathe in the hot springs from the mountain. The area has many of these spas, but we don’t know where exactly, and the group splits into 2, with two of us deciding to do the boat trip and the rest going off in search of ‘Onsen’, which is the Japanese name for these baths.
We all make it back to Tokyo, tired and hungry, where the remainder of us find food and sake at a very cool restaurant in Ropponghi, said to have inspired a scene from the movie – ‘Kill Bill’.
After leaving the restaurant, we think about going for a night cap, but it’s getting late, and there’s a rehearsal at 10 in the morning, so we head back to the hotel for a much needed kip.
Hello and welcome to the LSO tour of the Far East 2007! We’ve just arrived safely, after a somewhat extended 13 hour flight, and it’s a beautiful warm evening here. The journey into Tokyo from the airport is lush and green at first, but stark in contrast on entering the city.
The orchestra seems cheerful and chatty on the bus, although I feel a bit groggy, I have to say. Still, we’ve got all evening and a free day tomorrow in which to recover from the journey, and prepare for what will be a hard working tour for the LSO. Fourteen concerts, eight cities, just enough time.
So tonight, after a quick shower, we’re off to eat, and to soak up the atmosphere, and are quite content to settle for one of the first places we find….it’s a place with a suits-all menu, with these incredibly addictive Gyoza – we order far too many, but it’s rude to leave anything, and besides, we need to build up our strength in case tomorrow’s trip to Mount Fuji happens… watch this space!
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