When I interviewed NSO Music Director Chien Wen-pin (簡文彬) some years ago he smoked heavily and drank strong black coffee. Here, I thought, is a musical genius, a stellar student from an extremely young age, who's now in a position of considerable responsibility, and the pressure shows.
But the reverse is probably the truth. With his youthfully fashionable haircuts and quiet manner, Chien has always been an approachable figure showing no visible signs of the stress that might have come from his demanding schedule, jetting back and forth between Taiwan and Germany on an almost monthly basis.
Clearly he works enormously hard. He constantly has new scores to learn, both here and in Europe. Yet the last time I saw him he was backstage at Taipei's National Concert Hall helping to move a large cupboard.
When Chien was appointed the NSO's Music Director in July 2001, while still in his early 30s, he must have been a largely unknown figure to Taipei audiences. He'd graduated summa cum laude from the National Academy of Arts in piano at the astonishingly young age of 20, and then gone on to take the highest honors in a Master's in conducting in Vienna, learning basic German in only a month in the process. Now after six years he's leaving, and the NSO's management is finding it embarrassingly difficult to find his equal.
Chien told me earlier this week that he plans to continue his work at the Deutsche Oper am Rhein in Dusseldorf, Germany, where he's worked since August 1996. No further details were forthcoming.
At rehearsals Chien commands total attention, but invariably proceeds in a soft-spoken, modest manner, making the occasional quiet joke, but swiftly moving on with the task in hand. He's also proved himself willing to take personal risks, such as when he allowed the director of Verdi's Falstaff to dress him, as the conductor, in a sequence of absurd costumes. And if something doesn't work, as on the whole that didn't, he quickly moves on to something else.
But things almost always have worked. It would be tiresome to list again his achievements - the Beethoven, Mahler, Shostakovich and Strauss subscription concerts, the mounting of 13 operas, many of them Taiwan firsts, the commissioning of new works by Taiwanese composers, and the securing of appearances in Taiwan of a whole string of international soloists from Mstislav Rostropovich and Lorin Maazel to Jose Carreras and Placido Domingo.
When he departs later this summer after six years at the helm, many will be wondering what the priorities of Taiwan's most prestigious classical line-up will now be. But Chien himself is in no doubt. They should travel abroad more, he told me, and they should increase their efforts in the educational field at home.
"The NSO was featured as a front page story in Germany's Orchester magazine in April," he said. "More than 10,000 people will have read this, but they shouldn't only know about the orchestra on paper. They should also have the chance to experience it live."
As for musical education, Chien is clearly concerned about maintaining and increasing audience numbers. "There's nothing more important than building up our educational programs," he said. "We have some things, but not enough. There ought to be a specific program for every age group." Taiwan leads Asia in its training of young instrumentalists, and today is the undisputed regional leader in the field. The NSO's average age of only 37 testifies to this accomplishment. Getting non-specialists to attend classical concerts is, however, clearly a different matter.
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