I’m writing from the United Lounge at Tokyo’s Narita Airport where the Pittsburgh Symphony has been hanging out for the last four hours. The plane has been changed, and a new departure time of 7:00 pm set. The passengers have been waiting while the security staff and medical personnel evaluate the risk of swine flu on an incoming flight. I watched a crew of seven, all wearing masks, hair nets, and puffy blue scrubs as they hurried past with a cart of medical supplies. An ambulance has been parked at the steps of the 747 for some time, while uniformed guards talk on walkie-talkies, and other police vehicles gather on the tarmac. It’s hard to tell whether the caution has been blown out of proportion.
I’ve been listening to the radio. In Tokyo, the stations are found in the lower portion of the FM band below 88.1. I listened to NHK’s Music Pleasure, a program of syrupy easy listening. I noticed in China and here at the airport, several collections of music by Paul Mauriat and Richard Clayderman — hard to find on American radio these days.
There’s a fair amount of rock and roll on the air in Tokyo, and I listened to some classical music; a soprano singing Nessun Dorma, and Ombra Mai Fu from Handel’s Xerxes.
Some folks have been enjoying a little extra shopping. There is a nice sushi restaurant near our gate that has been an attraction.
PSO Resident Conductor Lawrence Loh sent me this video of himself triggering the fireworks in the 1812 Overture at last night’s concert in Kaohsiung to dedicate the new 2009 World Games Stadium.
Pittsburgh Symphony President and CEO Larry Tamburri gave me an interview. He’s off to New York, where his daughter is graduating from Juilliard this weekend. She’s a composer.
Larry mentioned that it wasn’t just the Mayor of Kaohsiung at the concert last night, but the President of Taiwan who appeared onstage during the flower presentations at the end.
The flight from Kaosiung to Taipei was smooth on China Air; then three hours from Taipei to Tokyo. We left the hotel at 5:00 am. Two more flights to go — 12 hours to Chicago, a five hour wait at O Hare, and then the two hours to get to Pittsburgh. See you when we get there! Stay well, and remember to wash your hands frequently!
The new 2009 World Games Stadium at Kaohsiung has been initiated with the joyous and thunderous sound of Beethoven’s Ode to Joy and Tchaikovsky’s 1812 Overture performed by the Pittsburgh Symphony. Fireworks during the 1812 and at the end of the evening went off without a hitch. Not as impressive as Zambelli, of course, but still great fun. The singers in the choir all had winning cheerful faces and sounded rich even through the amplification.
A police escort sped the Pittsburgh Symphony’s bus motorcade to the stadium entrance through soupy heat and humidity. The hotel room window is covered with fog and condensation as the hot night meets air conditioning. No rain. I loved the food fair — like the Three Rivers Arts Festival — next to the stadium. The crowd of 35,000 was very polite and extremely quiet during the concert. There was only one short welcome speech. Even the Mayor declined to speak. More than a dozen low flying birds zoomed over the heads of the musicians while they played. The fireworks in the 1812 exploded from the rim of the stadium, but the display at the end was behind the stage putting it beyond the sight lines of many. The area in the front of the stage was filled with thousands of folding chairs, but they were more comfortable than most for an outdoor event.
Capacity crowd for the PSO in Kaohsiung
PSO Music Director Manfred Honeck told me earlier today that the future of classical music may be here in Asia as the audience grows. He conducted the fastest 1812 Overture I’ve ever heard, making it even more sensational than it is by nature.
A terrific day, one of the sunniest on the tour, even if it was hot. No one gets much sleep tonight, with a 5:00 am departure. The return trip (for those not on extra side trips) heads to Taipei by China Air, then on to Tokyo and Chicago before Pittsburgh. Watch this spot for more photos, and if we can get some editing in over Memorial Day we’ll post some video clips. Thanks so much for traveling along!
There are so many unexpected moments in China. Here in Taiwan we’re in a hotel connected to the Japanese Department store Hanshin which has a large food court on the basement level and eight floors of shopping. The food court is a riot of interesting places including a McDonald’s offering a Big Mac Meal or a Happy Sharing Meal. There’s also a Joy Box Restaurant nearby. It’s interesting that when there is an English word amidst the Chinese it often denotes something pleasurable or joyful. I heard a pop song in Chinese on the radio with only two English words, “Beautiful Sunday.” Also in the food court in Kaohsiung, the Curry House—Coco features “Good Smell Good Curry” and the Mei Nung Restaurant serves “Blissful Heaven Vegetarian Meal.” A large pharmacy sells a potion for any ailment. Contrabassoonist James Rodgers stocked up on Tiger Balm here, and swears by it for any repetitive motion ailment or sports injury.
Mark Huggins and Hong-Guang Jia on the jumbotron
On the seventh floor, the housewares department offers an enormous variety of fragrance dispensers spraying a fine mist of delicate perfume, and a rack of dozens of fragrances. We have similar units at Kaufmann’s, but not with seven or eight brands of diffusers, and not such delicate, exquisite machinery doing the spritzing. The hotel is fragrant everywhere, with perfume in the elevator and the lobby. I also think I detect a little of the fragrance of an old lake house like the ancient guest cottages of Chautauqua. Maybe it’s my imagination, but with all the water nearby and the almost 100% humidity and 90 degree heat there might be something odiferous beneath the perfume. Another surprise happened at closing time, 10 pm. As I came down each of the seven escalators, the sales staff had gathered in a quartet and were bowing deeply to each customer, and smiling their thanks. After seven rounds of bowing on each floor you really feel like they mean it. On the elevator as you exit near the Chanel counter, there’s a smiling young woman wearing an Easter-egg-yellow outfit and a pillbox hat like Jackie Kennedy used to wear. She has white gloves and she raises her hand high as you leave the elevator to say, “thank you for shopping with us today,” in a theatrical flourish. The fragrance and makeup floor is as elegant as in any Saks, with familiar brands and complete mysteries in equal number.
The weather is sunny and hot. From the hotel we can see the constant parade of container boats, barges, and ships of all sizes and shapes parading through the channel. Some musicians have taken the day to travel by ferry to a nearby island. I heard that Neal Berntsen rented one of the tiny scooters that are parked in great numbers everywhere here.
24 hours till the opening of Kaohsiung stadium
I spoke with Martin Schebasta, the Chorus Master of the Vienna State Opera Chorus, who brought thirty of his singers to join two Taiwanese choirs in singing the Ode to Joy from Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony. He’s been here several times working with the Vienna Boys Choir. He knows Manfred’s brother, Rainer, who is one of the four concertmasters of the Vienna Philharmonic. The Philharmonic plays for the opera in the pit, so sooner or later you see everyone in Vienna. Martin told me the Taiwanese have never sung the Beethoven, and it’s a little work to get the German correct, but he’s pleased with the outcome. The Viennese singers are getting a short break from their opera season—they usually do several operas in a given week. This week, Seiji Ozawa and Bertrand de Billy are conducting, and Massenet’s Werther is in the lineup.
Honeck and soloists rehearse Beethoven's Ninth (Gregg Baker at right)
Gregg Baker is the bass-baritone among the Ode to Joy soloists. He sang this past season for Marvin Hamlisch and the Pittsburgh Symphony Pops in Showboat. He’ll be back next season for Richard Danielpour’s Pastime, when Danielpour is the PSO’s Composer of the Year. Gregg is tall and handsome with a commanding voice. He is working this summer in Graz, Austria with conductor Nicholas Harnoncourt for a performance of Porgy and Bess. Harnoncourt is more known for his Mozart than his Gershwin, so I’m certain it will be an interesting production.
I meant to mention that several members of the orchestra reported seeing former Pittsburgh Symphony Managing Director Gideon Toeplitz in Washington, D.C. at the Kennedy Center concert just before this PSO tour. Gideon is recovering heroically after brain tumor surgery had left him paralyzed and unable to speak. He nearly died of a staph infection, but is doing much better with his D.C.-based daughter looking in on him.
Percussionist Andrew Reamer (left) with Manfred Honeck
Manfred Honeck welcomed me to his room for an interview. He is delighted with the tour results, and makes no apology for the incredibly fast tempo he’s chosen for Tchaikovsky’s 1812 Overture despite the challenging acoustics of the new stadium here in Kaohsiung. He didn’t have time to climb the Great Wall, but the presenter of the concerts in Beijing took him for a forty-course Chinese feast after the concerts. He ran into a few Viennese friends who are living in Berlin, including a former member of the Vienna Philharmonic. On this tour, Honeck also enjoyed conducting a youth orchestra at the Beijing Conservatory. He says the 1812 bells should sound like those of a Russian Orthodox Church, even though Tchaikovsky doesn’t write a specific tune to be played.
Maestro Honeck is looking forward to Mahler’s “Resurrection” Symphony, that will close the PSO season at Heinz Hall. You can hear it live on QED 893. In 30 minutes, I’ll be on the bus to join 35,000 Beethoven lovers at the new stadium. When the Penguins open their new arena, they should test it with the Pittsburgh Symphony before the first puck hits the ice. Many members of the Orchestra watched the playoffs via the Internet even though the sound didn’t always synch up with the action.
I’m sitting just behind the stage of the Kaohsiung stadium while the Pittsburgh Symphony rehearses Beethoven’s Ode to Joy from the Ninth Symphony with a chorus of singers from the Vienna State Opera and choirs from Taiwan. It is a very warm and humid evening. The stage for the Orchestra is brightly lit with colorful lights projected onto white and blue curtains. The shape of the shell and its colored lights looks a little like the Hollywood Bowl. Walking into a downtown 7-Eleven this afternoon I picked up some flyers for the event here with a color photograph of the Pittsburgh Symphony on stage at Heinz Hall. This is a city of 1.5 million. A port city with huge shipping traffic. It’s historically been an important military city with the Taiwanese navy based here.
Stadium workers are rolling rubber mats over the playing field sod. The technical crew is putting the jumbotron through its paces. It’s an elegant design for the stadium. Percussionist Christopher Allen practiced filling in for the cannon in the 1812 Overture by Tchaikovsky with his big bass drum heavily amplified. The fireworks were tested with a few colorful blasts. Stage technician James Petri told me they were rolling in the big instrument cases morning and afternoon in the heat but the Taiwan crew had been extremely pleasant to work with. Manfred is working on the details with lots of stopping and starting—telling the singers to accent ‘seid umschlungen.’ The soloists include Gregg Baker, who sang with the Pittsburgh over a decade ago when Lorin Maazel took Gershwin’s Porgy and Bess to Italy’s Arena di Verona. The amplification sounds good even with the wah-wah acoustical effect of stadium echoes. Imagine a Beethoven concert at PNC Park or Yankee Stadium and you have an idea of how it sounds.
Lake at Kaohsiung, Taiwan
This morning, Principal French Horn Bill Caballero and Associate Principal Horn Steve Kostyniak walked with me to the harbor area. We poked in a few shops. This was a dusty part of the city with a jumble of convenience stores , restaurants, a fountain pen shop and, surprisingly, two dentists a few doors apart with their patients mouths open in the chair focused under a light. No air conditioning, and just steps from the street the door wide open. Makes you wonder abut the possibilities for infection but the patient can watch passersby to keep the mind off the probing. A first for me.
We took a taxi to the area known as Lotus Park, a man-made lake in a part of the city where a temple was established in 1684. There are several colorful temples with enormous incense burners in front. You can buy a stick of incense and say a prayer. There were hundreds of giant turtles swimming in front of one temple. The temples seem right from a movie set with ornate decoration and intricate ceilings. Gigantic 30 foot figures, a lady, a long bearded pirate sort of guy, a dragon– all greet the penitent.
Temple statue in Kaohsiung
Violinist Lorien Benet Hart helped me negotiate a good price for 20 good luck charms for the students of Minadeo Elementary School in Squirrel Hill, where my wife Laurie Cunningham is substitute teaching for the last few days of the Pittsburgh Public School year.
We sat down in the hotel lobby restaurant for a quick lunch, joined by Principal Viola Randoph Kelly, Timothy Adams Principal Tympanist, and his friend Kim Toscano who is the tympanist for the Tucson Symphony. I always like to ask the question “What’s on your iPod?” Bass Jeff Grubbs told that just this morning, he downloaded a classic recording by saxophonist Joe Henderson playing Brazilian music. His favorite jazz bassists include Eddie Gomez and Scott LeFaro.
They’re wrapping up the Beethoven 7th rehearsal. It’s almost 10pm. Time to get back on the bus for the thirty-minute ride back to the hotel.
There are a few westerners in the big hotels in Beijing. At breakfast, I met Linda Heimels, born in Amsterdam. She told me she loves living in Beijing even more than her few years spent in New York and Washington D.C. She told me the Chinese are very warm and open once you gain their confidence, but it takes a while. She was surprised when she joined the Westin staff because she found the her colleagues often waited for orders more than she was used to in the states, perhaps a holdover from the tight control of the Communist regime. Though Linda had been taught as a child to learn from her mistakes, she found that making a mistake causes deep regret for the Chinese and a loss of honor.
The Pittsburgh Symphony’s concerts at “The Egg,” Beijing’s National Concert Hall on Thursday and Friday, were both well received. I joined the contingent from the Pittsburgh Regional Alliance for a reception at the at the Grand Hyatt hosted by Westinghouse China Chief Executive William Poirer and his colleagues Barry Williams, Finance Director; and Gavin Liu, VP of Sales. Bill had invited friends and business partners from the Pittsburgh Regional Alliance, my tour sponsor Bayer Corporation, Siemens China Head of Human Resources Sonja Condon, and American Embassy staff. Liam Condon, the Managing Director of Bayer China, said his office is next door to the sprawling Rem Koolhaas-designed CCTV tower. Last February, Chinese New Year fireworks got out of hand and burned its companion 34-story not-quite-finished luxury hotel to a shell. CCTV’s CEO resigned just this week over the scandal. The state television network CCTV operates at least nine of the channels I’ve seen on the hotel TV. I was told that only westerners get to see CNN/ The channel is blocked unless you’re on a VIP list in the rest of the country.
Bayer people in Beijing
Bayer’s Horst Dieter Hoericke and Liam told me that Bayer has over 4,000 employees in China but they don’t get a chance to see their American colleagues except at corporate gatherings at their world headquarters in Leverkusen, Germany. When I mentioned that Bayer sponsors the Pittsburgh Symphony radio broadcasts and my tour coverage, Liam said, “Culture is in the company’s DNA along with service to the community”.
Carnegie Mellon University graduate and American Embassy Vice Consul Michael Quigley and his wife Tetsuko told me they loved watching Chris Fennimore and listening to QED-FM when they lived in Pittsburgh. Tetsuko even named particular potato favorites they’d acquired from the QED Cooks recipe books!
New Castle native Daniel Piccuta, the Charge d’Affaires of the American Embassy, said he was thrilled to have the Pittsburgh Symphony in town. He has overseen the transition at the Embassy from the Bush to the Obama administrations. Just this week, Utah Governor Jon Hunstman was nominated as US Ambasador to China. Huntsman speaks fluent Mandarin from his days as a Mormon missionary in Taiwan. Piccuta’s Chinese interest began with his Chinese classes at Pitt. He offered me a ride in his black embassy car with Chinese driver. “You can’t have an American flag on your car and get in a traffic accident in Beijing,” he explained. I had to pass because it was so close to concert time I worried I’d never get backstage. It turned out the weather was rainy and traffic was extra heavy, so some concertgoers missed the opening piece, Rapture, by Christopher Rouse. Piccuta said he was glad that Pittsburgh brought a new piece by an American composer. Rapture was a riddle for the audience — they didn’t seem too excited about Richard Strauss’ Death and Transfiguration, either. The hall was two-thirds full. On tour, you hope to see a full house.
On the second half, Beethoven’s Seventh worked its magic and the Chinese were on their feet calling for two encores — the finale of Haydn’s 88th Symphony, and Morning Mood from Grieg’s Peer Gynt. Each got a “standing O.” Both PSO Music Director Manfred Honeck and Concertmaster Andres Cardenes were given huge floral bouquets wrapped in flower-shaped paper.
Ruth Ann Dailey told me she sat next to an Australian who is living in Beijing doing systems integration work for a business merger. He’d been to The Egg for concerts by the Chicago Symphony and the Vienna Philharmonic. He said that there were more people at the Pittsburgh concert and that Pittsburgh was received with greater enthusiasm. Neither of the other orchestras got a standing ovation. I noticed that Mariss Jansons brought the Concertgebouw Orchestra to Beijing earlier this year.
Cellist Michael Lipman finds Lang Lang CDs
At rehearsal on Friday morning, I met Maria Stephens from Pittsburgh. She’s working in China for the German government in the field of microfinance, helping rural areas develop. She said that the Chinese have no idea how to do publicity for their classical concerts. She’d struggled to get ticket details and had to work hard to find the box office after no luck at buying tickets over the phone. A Beijing friend reported seeing nothing in the papers about the concert. I didn’t see any posters for the concert. I did see banners for the Opera Festival taking place at the Egg’s Opera House. After the concert, as we walked to the buses, we heard O Sole Mio from what seemed like three tenors at the Opera House.
In the afternoon, I took a taxi with cellist Michael Lipman to the Beijing Central Conservatory where pianist Lang Lang began his rise to fame. His posters and recordings are prominently displayed in the CD shop at the conservatory entrance. I picked up some Chinese piano music, a collection of favorites from a Chinese harmonica player and some Chinese jazz. There are over 2,000 students at the Conservatory. Its guest faculty is a virtual Who’s Who of the classical music world with names like Rostropovich and Dutoit among a long list of luminaries. Our Chinese-born Pittsburgh Symphony violinist Hong-Guang Jia is a guest faculty member too, visiting at least once a year. He took a carload of friends to the Central Conservatory, who were impressed to find a photo on the wall of the Pittsburgh virtuoso who seems to have the stateside nickname, “Hongy.”
Yes, it's Jackie Chan
My seatmate, percussionist Michael Pape, spotted action movie star Jackie Chan at a movie theater. Chan has been working in Sichuan as a volunteer in the massive disaster relief program following last year’s earthquake. There was a wild scene, as if the crowd had spotted Tom Cruise. Michael took a photo and forwarded it to me. Bass trombonist Murray Crewe has promised me his picture of the Terrible Towel being unfurled at the Great Wall.
After the Friday rehearsal, I walked over to the famous Tiananmen Square where Mao’s giant portrait overlooks the entrance to the Forbidden City, the Emperors’ sprawling complex of temples, gardens and residences. Thousands of Chinese tourists swarm through the square, following leaders wearing red caps and bearing pennant style flags. Eventually, each visitor stands in front of Mao’s portrait to have their picture taken. Mao still has his fans. In fact, some say there are new leftists who gather at the Utopia coffee shop to express their admiration for Mao’s ideas. CCTV broadcasts a regular talk show led by Yang Rui who expounds new leftist anti-American views. Just the same, it seems the old ways under Mao could never return after China’s astonishing economic transformation over the past twenty years. Everyone in the Pittsburgh Symphony has commented on the amazing transformation. New York Times columnist Paul Krugman calls it the “Great Wall of Traffic.” Volkswagens and Audi taxis, trucks and buses clog every road. Just blocks from our hotel were luxury retailers, Dior, Chopard, Versace, Zegna, Cartier you name it.
I strolled around the Great Hall of the People, where the Pittsburgh Symphony played in 1987, memorable for its hole-in-the-floor restrooms. the Chinese commode is still an oddity. At the Great Wall, the restroom sinks have the usual electric eye to start the water when you wash your hands but when you open the stall door you find only a white porcelain trough flat in the floor.
The Mao Memorial tomb usually involves a three-hour wait to see Mao’s body. Principal Bassoon Nancy Goeres made it inside.
The Pittsburgh Symphony rehearsing at China's National Center for the Performing Arts, "The Egg."
Returning to the Egg, I enjoyed the water which flows in a pool all around it. There were hundreds of tourists visiting the Egg and stopping in the shops, bookstore, and restaurants in the broad lobby with a soaring ceiling.
The all-Beethoven Friday concert with Orion Weiss playing Beethoven’s Emperor Concerto and Manfred Honeck conducting Beethoven’s Seventh Symphony was even more successful. It was tough to get you a photo. I was asked not to use my camera even though there were hundreds of concertgoers trying to use their cell phones or cameras and flashes going off. The Chinese are trying to stop photos in the concert hall but it’s a losing battle. They shine red laser pointers at the offending cameras.
PSO musicians Betsy Heston and Neal Berntsen at the Great Wall
While sifting through the photos I took today, I’ve been listening to MTV China on the hotel TV. You have to wonder what Chairman Mao would have thought about the Pussycat Dolls, Madonna, Britney Spears and Janet Jackson cavorting in the People’s Republic. There’s some Chinese rock and a Chinese rapper in something called simply ‘Eight.’ A group named Super Junior sang their song Sorry Sorry to an electro dance beat with the English words “Let’s Dance” appearing on screen now and then. I haven’t heard any classical music on the radio. It’s mostly talk with the few pop stations playing what sounds like knock offs of Western hits. There is still some popular radio drama on the radio although I think it’s mostly soap opera. The taxi driver was listening to an old-school radio drama on the trip today.
I was watching for Madame Mao’s limousine which you can rent for a tour. The New York Times reported last year that the bulletproof black stretch limo with red velvet trim will take you on a 50 minute tour. You can sip Möet & Chandon champagne with a personal tour guide from the Red Detachment of Women while Mao’s voice crackles on the radio — all for the bargain price of $270.
The Great Wall of China feels every bit as steep as it looks. About half of the Pittsburgh Symphony ignored the ominous signs suggesting that if you have heart or brain disease you should take it easy. It was a perfect day for the hour-long ride to the Ju Yong Guan section where we walked a little over a mile of the 3,000 mile wall. Our guide told us it’s a myth that you can see it from space. It does nearly disappear along the way, including at a spot near the end of the today’s hike. At the summit, Trumpeter Neal Berntsen and Tubist Craig Knox saluted Bayer Corporation for its support of the symphony and the weekly concerts broadcast Sundays at 8:00 pm on Classical QED 893. PSO Director of Corporate Support Liz Helmsen organized a photo to thank tour sponsors including the Hillman Endowment.
Kate Black treads carefully
Violinist Jeremy Black and his wife Kate enjoyed the ascent. Kate impressed everyone with her Chinese sun hat. Concertmaster Andres Cardenes was there, along with PSO CEO Larry Tamburri, Dr. Ted Osial and his daughter, CMU student Alyssa Osial. Hornist Robert Lauver, Resident Conductor Lawrence Loh, and Cellist Irv Kaufmann were also among the climbers.
On the return, we had plenty of time to contemplate Beijing traffic in this city of 15 million. The return trip was nearly two hours. The greenery and flowers along the route amaze; especially the thousands of roses in orange and many other shades. If the plan was to hide some of the rough and tumble concrete buildings behind greenery in time for last year’s Olympic games, it was a great success.
This morning, I joined percussionists Jeremy Branson and Andrew Reamer with Mrs. Reamer, Ruth Ann Dailey, who you may know as the Post Gazette columnist who served as a regular for a season of WQEDtv’s Off Q.
We took a taxi to the Temple of Heaven where the Emperors prayed for a good harvest beginning in the 14th Century. It’s a Unesco World Heritage Site, and a $6 million dollar restoration effort has it looking great. I noticed an exhibit featuring world leaders who have done the tour including Richard Nixon. We found some Divine Music Administration playing cards in the gift shop featuring the Emperor’s instruments. We heard some traditional singing and playing, too. A crowd gathered ’round to sing along when they knew the folk tunes.
The Pittsburgh Symphony will open its tour with Richard Strauss’ Death and Transfiguration, Christopher Rouse’s Rapture (written for the PSO) and Beethoven’s Symphony No. 7 tomorrow night after a morning rehearsal. We’ll be up and out of the hotel at 8:30 am.
When the Pittsburgh Symphony planned its first tour with Manfred Honeck in Asia, it wasn’t expecting a worldwide flu pandemic. But in spite of the worries, the orchestra has arrived safely in Beijing. After nearly 24 hours of travel and a 13-and-a-half hour flight from Chicago, the players were scanned with a thermal sensing device and a few hot spots resulted in extra questioning. After more than an hour in the customs clearance checkpoints, the Pittsburgh Symphony was given a clean bill of health. Everyone filled out a health Declaration Form with indelicate questions such as, “Have you had close contact with pig within the past week,” and “Have you had close contact with persons or suspects suffering from influenza?”
The form also asks you to mark the symptoms you observed from a list of check box horribles. All the customs agents are wearing surgical masks and there were a number or travelers with masks even in Chicago’s O’Hare airport.
Pittsburgh is Mister Rogers’ neighborhood. I was glad to be reminded at the C Gate, setting sail at 9:30 on Monday morning from Pittsburgh International, where King Friday the 13th’s castle still stands proudly with nice flat screen TVs on each side offering Johnny Costa’s gentle jazz piano. On display, you see Fred Rogers’ pink sweater next to King Friday, Daniel Striped Tiger; and Cornflake S. Pecially, who specializes in making things. While washing my hands in preparation for departure, I was happy to hear PPG Classics on the Move sweetly serenading everyone with music played by Chatham Baroque.
We had an hour in Chicago, where I noticed violinist Dennis O’Boyle with a giant hardbound tome, The Cambridge Ancient History, and a volume of word puzzles only a Sudoku fan would love, a game called KenKen. On board, Dennis told me he did skip lightly through a few chapters on the Chinese Iron Age to spend time with the puzzles. We enjoyed looking out the window of the Boeing 777 kitchen to see the frozen lakes of Siberia. The pilot followed a route North from Chicago over Minnesota, Thunder Bay, Baffin Bay, near the North Pole, Siberia and on into China. The United flight crew posted the unhappy result of the Penguins-Capitals playoff on the side of the kitchen cabinets. They seemed very relaxed about the musicians hanging out in the galley.
Bass Trombonist Murray Crewe won praise from the stewardess for his yellow “Bass Trombone Rawks” T-shirt, which he said was a gift from his daughter, found in Halifax. His reading was Julie and Julia: My Year of Cooking Dangerously by Julie Powell. The author spent a calendar year learning the 524 recipes of Julia Child’s classic cookbook Mastering the Art of French Cooking. I understand a movie is forthcoming. Also in the 777 kitchen were two runners from Vermont on their way to the Beijing marathon this weekend, which partly follows the Great Wall.
I sat next to percussionist Michael Pape, who plays regularly in the Fort Wayne, Indiana Philharmonic and has been added to the tour and three Heinz Hall concerts this season by virtue of his fine work at Carnegie Mellon and as a student of PSO Principal Tympanist Timothy Adams. Michael is a Bethel Park native. He told me he was enjoying a classic Herbie Hancock release from 1974, Thrust, on his iPod. Thrust is the sequel to the Headhunters album which is heard each week on WQED tv as the theme for Black Horizons.
The 14 hour journey was helped along by Clint Eastwood’s Gran Torino and Frost/Nixon among the movie selection, and a mid-flight bowl of noodles with almond cookie.
Beijing office buildings
The pilot said he had optimum landing conditions in Beijing with clear sky and not a trace of the smog that worried the planners of last year’s Olympics. The airport with its ultramodern light and airy design is a revelation for the Pittsburgh Symphony members who remember the trip 22 years ago to a dim arrival hall with nervous Red Guards keeping watch.
They also remember the hotel with mouse traps in the rooms. I remember the Lorin Maazel tour to Beijing because violinist Linda Fischer didn’t realize the bag mistakenly delivered to her room belonged to me. It stayed in China until US Steel’s miracle worker Robert Littlefield negotiated the return of my penny loafers and the reel-to-reel tape of the Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony with the famous Chinese Chorus sung in Mandarin at the enormous Beijing Sports Palace. That was six months later. I remember coming out into the late evening with hundreds of bicycles whizzing around and dinging their warning bells.
Harmonious traffic sign
On the way into Beijing today we saw a busy bicycle lane next to six other lanes of traffic and overhead signs promoting “Harmonious Beijing Traffic Safety” in English and Chinese. The transformation of the city is amazing, with gleaming office towers all around the Symphony’s hotel just a few steps away from a Ritz-Carlton. The office buildings are festooned with huge colorful red Chinese characters illuminated at the top.
I spoke in the lobby of the hotel with Thomas Thompson, who was enjoying a hamburger and fries. Chris Thompson told me, “We had a pupu platter at Sesame Inn in Mt Lebanon Sunday night before we left. Highly recommended!” Principal E-flat clarinet Thompson joined in 1966 and was on the first Asian tour with William Steinberg, which included a televised concert in Tokyo over the national network NHK.
The PSO's hotel in Beijing.
Also scoping out the neighborhood was WQED-FM Musical Kid Heidi Gorton and her parents, Principal Harpist Gretchen van Hoesen and Co-Principal Oboist James Gorton, with Assistant Principal Bassist Betsy Heston. Heidi is playing harp on the tour, having toured China at age one back in 1987 when she was fed on the Great Wall by Thomas Thompson. Heidi just graduated from Juilliard on Monday morning at 7:00 am as she completed her last test online.
CCTV1, the national network of China, devoted the entire evening to solemn ceremonies marking the first anniversary of the Sichuan earthquake which killed 75,000. Flowers were placed at the memorial to the dead. Tomorrow, many in the Pittsburgh Symphony will take their first trip to the Great Wall before Thursday’s first rehearsal and concert here in Beijing.
Beginning May 12, 2009. Jim Cunningham will be on the scene as one of the first American orchestras to visit China returns to the land of Lang Lang and over 50 million young classical music students. Music Director Manfred Honeck will conduct the PSO in Beijing at “The Egg,” then in Shanghai, and finally at the inauguration of the 2009 World Games Stadium in Kaohsiung, Taiwan.
