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A maestro's legacy

After eight years at the helm of Taiwan's National ymphony Orchestra, Chien Wen-pin is turning his attention to new things, leaving behind a strong foundation on which his successor can build. PHOTO: COURTESY OF NSO

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.

Most concert-goers will agree that Chien has raised his orchestra's profile in spectacular fashion. He told me that if he had to choose only one success to be proud of it would be the NSO's having "found its position in Taiwan." Reading between the lines, this can only mean that it's now recognized as the nation's premier orchestra.

Leading the NSO hasn't been all plain sailing. There was a contentious interlude in the middle of Chien's tenure when some musicians had their contracts terminated following a re-auditioning process, and they called a widely-reported press conference in protest. But Chien's time on the rostrum has nonetheless been largely a success story.

Perhaps what's most interesting is what Chien didn't say about his future. He may be leaving to work full-time with a famous European opera company, but the freedom he had in Taipei to stage anything he chose whenever he liked won't be duplicated there. He'll be part of an organization that has most of the great classics already in its repertoire, rather than the leader of a pioneering band presenting major works for the first time in what is in many ways still virgin territory. His successor at the NSO will still be in the enviable position of having a huge amount of work new to Taiwan, including new operas, to offer.

"To achieve something is hard," Chien said. "But to maintain that achievement is even more difficult. I hope the NSO will continue developing, moving on from what it has achieved in the first 20 years of its history."

But the management's hesitation in making a decision about his successor is indicative at a deep level. Appointing an untried young Taiwanese back in 2001 was an obvious gamble. That time it paid off, and Chien proved a winner. To bring off a comparable move this time round, however, will be no easy matter. Chien stretched the wings of the NSO even as he stretched his own, and in the process enormously enriched the nation's musical life. When comes such another?
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