“Also, there’s none of the rivalry you sometimes find among musicians. I was an oboist in an orchestra for many years, and I know what can happen!”
Taiwan’s Evergreen Group specializes in maritime transport, air transport (including Eva Air) and the hotel business. The ESO was founded six years ago, and Schmalfuss has been its music director since January of 2007. It’s 70-strong, smaller than some of the world’s great orchestras. But this smallness contributes to the special nature of its sound. In addition, as Schmalfuss pointed out, if he needs more players for a particular work, there’s no shortage of talented instrumentalists in the Taipei area.
Gernot Schmalfuss is himself a celebrated oboist. As a member of the elite Consortium Classicum, he’s recorded many chamber works for wind instruments by, among others, Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven and Schubert.
He’s also known in the musical world for having discovered some lost scores by Antonio Casimir Cartellieri, a contemporary of Beethoven who died young. He’d been looking for them in the libraries of castles and ducal palaces for 10 years, he told me, and finally discovered two of his four symphonies. They’re in a style that lies somewhere between Haydn and middle-period Beethoven, he said. They’d never been played in modern times, and therefore never recorded.
It appears that Schmalfuss actually bought these antique scores himself, but he was untypically — and tantalizingly — reluctant to go into details. So I asked him if maybe they provided a recording opportunity for the ESO.
“Well, we do have plans to issue more CDs and DVDs, but exactly what and when have yet to be worked out. We’re also thinking about opera — and ballet too, in conjunction with some of the local dance companies.”
In 2007 the ESO performed in Los Angeles to a very enthusiastic critical reception. They’ve been invited back, but next month they’re going to Shanghai to give a concert in the 2,000-seat Shanghai Oriental Arts Center in Pudong. They’ll also provide the musical accompaniment for the opening of a new Evergreen building in the city.
Orchestral versions of Taiwanese folk songs have always been an important ingredient in ESO concerts, and they constitute the boarding music on Eva Air flights. Will they play Taiwanese folk songs in Shanghai, I asked.
“Oh yes!” said Schmalfuss. “But also Japanese, Indonesian and Chinese ones as well.”
As I got up to go, Schmalfuss said, “You can’t say Brahms is my favorite composer, or Bach, as some people do. I just like good music — and even not so good music as well!” He laughed.
Such honesty was typical of the man’s generous and tolerant spirit, I thought. Small wonder, then, that the sparkling ESO can be guaranteed to provide such an enjoyable, and even rejuvenating, evening’s entertainment on a regular basis.
RSS