Extravagances: Malaysian Philharmonic Orchestra
Mind you, classical music is great. But the figures are stunning:
Lim Guan Eng, revealed that the cost to maintain the musicians is a whopping RM3.5 million a month.
“As much as 95 percent of the foreign musicians are paid between RM16,000 and RM28,000 a month and given two months paid leave every year. The conductor is paid RM130,000 a month while the (conductor’s) assistant is paid RM50,000 a month,” he said.
“For the past 10 years since it was established, this orchestra has ’swallowed’ a total of RM500 million,” he added.
Ouch! That’s a lot of cash.
Instead of bemoaning how much the ‘rakyat’ thinks it owns Petronas when it doesn’t, perhaps Petronas can reconsider some of its priorities.
Again, I personally enjoy the MPO and all the fun music (if not always sitting through entire concerts), but think of the money spent compared to the number and type of people who benefit.
Petronas talked about the need for it to conserve funds to invest. Well, perhaps we need to both narrow and broaden that perception of ‘investment.’
For my money, the best guarantee for the country’s future is not the most profitable financial investment portfolio, but poverty elimination, education and so on. With a better developed rakyat, we will more naturally ease ourselves of our Petronas-dependency.
Tags-Government Appropriation
Well…. it is true how many ordinaly rakyat would benefit from it. This MPO is only for the gov’s elite not for the normal rakyat….. so in the other words it is an entertainment event benefit to “those special one”.
Another scandal!
For all the money spent on the orchestra, I see no benefit coming to the ordinary people. The Opposition should voiced out in Parliament that this is a waste of the rakyat (Petronas) money. This is a western culture. Do we need to promote western culture? Malaysian culture needs more fund for promotion, and a fraction of the money is required only. Thus I hope the rakyat would ask the government to disband this orchestra and use the money saved to buy more rice.For 3 month’s saving of Rm105 m we could have bought the 500,000 tons of rice from Thailand (about Rm 110m extra was needed to be successful in the rice tender). Imagine how many mouths could the government feed with all these rice.
I wrote classical concert reviews, and a weekly music column for the Sunday Star for 15 years (1980s through mid-1990s), and was active in Kuala Lumpur’s amateur music performing scene from the 1960s and 1970s, culminating my performing career as a professional flautist with the MetroManila Symphony Orchestra in the late 1970s, so I should be in a good position to comment about the Malaysian Philharmonic Orchestra.
I am one of those bitterly disappointed with the MPO. Setting up a professional orchestra in Kuala Lumpur was a great idea, and to start it off with almost 100 percent foreign players may have been acceptable (wags in KL called the MPO the Mostly Putih Orchestra), but a decade on, and still the orchestra is overwhelmingly foreign (though with more non-White players, the orchestra is still the Mostly Pendatang Orchestra), and not even a Malaysian conductor at the helm, is all together too much to bear.
A symphony orchestra, anywhere in the world, reflects city, and/or NATIONAL aspirations, and that means basing the orchestra on LOCAL talents.
It maybe true that Malaysian classical musicians are “not up to the standards” of a “world class” professional orchestra, but who are we kidding when we have a “Malaysian” Philharmonic which is most certainly NOT Malaysian. Call it the Petronas Philharmonic. But, not, surely, the Malaysian Philharmonic.
Money can always BUY the best the world can offer. If that is the philosophy of Petronas, the MPO’s hundreds of millions of dollars would have been better spent importing foreign politicians to give Malaysia a truly world-class parliament! But no right thinking person would ever dream of such an idiotic idea. We get the politicians that we have in Malaysia, the good, and the mostly terrible (just look at your live television to see how the YB, from both sides of the aisle, behave!)
But yet, Petronas thought it was doing right by “Malaysia” to buy a mostly foreign orchestra, which has remained mostly foreign for over a decade. Yes, I know that the orchestra has in recent years attempted to train a young Malaysian orchestra, organised competitions for local composers, and occasionally gives concerts at Old Folks Homes, but that hardly makes up for the obvious fact that what Malaysia needs, perhaps even wants, is a MALAYSIAN Philharmonic Orchestra, warts and all. And, as it grows in its technical and musical competence, so too will national pride in our truly Malaysian orchestra.
The smart thing for Petronas to have done was to have seeded a Malaysian orchestra with foreign players (for example, there is the National Symphony, or the Penang Symphony Orchestra which was actually quite good when I last reviewed them in Kuala Lumpur in the early 1990s), and in that way raise Malaysian performing standards. And, as the Malaysians players grew in the self-confidence as instrumentalists and interpreters of serious music, the contract of the foreign players would be allowed to lapse.
When I played professionally with the Metro Manila Symphony Orchestra, way back in the late 1970s, I was the ONLY non-Filipino in the orchestra! The orchestra had lost its star principal flautist to work overseas, and I had just arrived after having finished training with Emil Opava, principal flute of the Minnesota Orchestra, and came at the “right time” to fill an “urgent” need. And as soon (5 or 6 months)as the orchestra (whose patron was Mdm Imelda Marcos) found a suitable replacement, I took my leave, and headed to Northern Philippines where I was researching what Mdm Marcos’ husband, President Ferdinand Marcos, was doing to the tribal people in the Cordillera mountains!
This is what is meant by NATIONALISM in classical music, where the orchestras, conductors, local serious music composers, and the players themselves, are all imbued with a sense of national purpose, and destiny, and they collectively contribute to national cultural heritage and pride.
Unfortunately, almost none of the words I have just written above characterise the “Malaysian” Philharmonic Orchestra. It is almost a mercenary musical outfit where foreigners are paid huge salaries, to play mostly foreign music, to an audience comprising mainly foreigners (expatriates) and their Malaysian friends, and a few like yours truly who genuinely likes Western Classical Music and who has been involved in developing the scene from the 1960s when I first joined the Kuala Lumpur Symphony Orchestra, through the 1980s and 1990s writing for the Sunday Star, to the present when, at my age, I only occasionally pick up my instruments in a vain attempt to persuade my children to carry on the “family tradition.”
Make no mistake, the MPO is a good orchestra. It just simply is not a Malaysian orchestra, something we Malaysians can proudly call OUR VERY OWN.
It is NOT too late for Petronas to do the right thing.
First, appoint a Malaysian permanent conductor whose brief has to be to start replacing the foreign players with Malaysian musicians. I accept that the “high” standards the the MPO currently attains may fall (slightly), but that is the price we as a nation must be willing to pay to build up our own cultural resources which, in the not too distant future, will then put Malaysia on the world’s concert stages with an orchestra all Malaysians, and the rest of the world, will instantly recognize as being genuinely Malaysian.
Richard Dorall
nat: great comment sir, you should send in as a letter or op-ed to the papers and online media :) “the MPO’s hundreds of millions of dollars would have been better spent importing foreign politicians to give Malaysia a truly world-class parliament!” LOL!! :)
I went to watch our MPO perform for the first time. The hall was exquisite and great care was given to attire at the entrance. I waited very excitedly for it was my first time watching our MPO. The tickets for 2 adults n 3 children cost us a whopping RM 260. Nevertheless, I read so much abt our MPO that I did not mind the exhorbitant fee.
I must say that I was very disappointed to see no Malaysian in the orchestra. I asked myself how can this be called MPO when there is no Msian at all. Exactly how can they define this set of musicians as Malaysian? Truly intriguing!
The conductor for the day was Mathias Lambert. Though the whole experience was one of a kind I still want to see more Malaysians in the Malaysian Philharmonic Orchestra.
Well, having a world class orchestra in Kuala Lumpur is an important part in the cultural development of the city.
Any symphonic/philharmonic orchestra can serve as a platform to develop local culture - so Richard (see comment above) is definately right. The MPO is a good idea but it has to slowly evolve into a Malaysian orchestra with plenty of local musicians.
In addition, local composers should slowly be given centre stage amidst the Mozarts, Beethovens and Dvoraks. Who knows that one day a more Malaysian MPO playing more of modern Malaysianc composer’s music will give birth to another Holst, another Williams or another Britten :)
Hi Nat,
I posted a link to this post on my Facebook with the following comment:
“Gosh! That’s a lot of money. But I would like to go on record to say that the MPO has contributed a great deal to the musical landscape - in particular, in the area of nurturing new talents. I speak from experience. My son has been involved in the orchestra’s outreach programme since he was nine. He also takes lessons from the orchestra members. He auditioned for and was accepted into the newly formed youth orchestra. In the MPYO, he has found friendship and camaraderie. He has found mentors, most significantly, the MPO’s associate conducter Kevin Field, who leads the youth orchestra. And his interest and skills have grown exponentially, enabling us to see the depth and breadth of his talent. Previously, a self-conscious, rather aloof boy, the last two years have transformed him into a happy, confident, self-motivated teenager. For all that, I am immensely grateful to the MPYO, the MPO and Petronas.”
I will be the first person to agree that the way both the MPO and DFP are administered leaves too much to be desired. However, the orchestra is making a great effort to train a new generation of Malaysian musicians.
Kevin Field is hoping that what he has achieved with the MPYO will lead to greater integration of music education and group playing in the education system.
The next MPYO concert is on 28 May. The tickets are only RM30 each. Please come and watch them play before you damn them.
Dear bloggers, Petronas should invest more money in fostering local talent and promote real national talent. If the MPO is to stay they must find the mechanisms to reach out to the local music industry and academia, to ultimately have a local industry that is not dependant on a foreign workforce exclusively! I agree with most of you 100%. Its funny that its been a few days and the MPO or DFP hasn’t made any real public statement to defend themselves and their agenda (politically i suppose), I suppose they must be carefully preparing a public answer with all these political turmoil on them.
I fail to understand how you all see culture, humanities, arts & music as having a nationality (puzzling). so sad to think we are attacking the one and only serious orchestra in our country that can play at a professional level, besides providing opportunities for cultural enrichment, education and training of younger generations of musicians, fostering of local composers, etc. If anything, we should be wondering how could we get more MPO’s to be established and community orchestras to be started. Why is only the government paying for it? why not the private sector too? after all, the cultural life of our city/country/estate is the responsibility of everyone, not just the monkeys we elect to wear suits and attend absurd endless surreal meetings for the rest of their lifes… Yes, I agree, the salaries sound exhorbitant to me as well (I make an insignificant fraction of that) but these numbers and this discussion reveal to me the symptoms of a bigger problem, not the disease itself. People are not starving BECAUSE of the MPO! Wake up! An exponentially higher amount of money than the one quoted is wasted in our country in far more unnoble & absurd enterprises.
An orchestra provides culture for a town and its people, fosters intellectuality among family members, friends & colleagues, promotes scholarship activity, enriches artists, thinkers & leaders, inspires excellence. Most important of all in sociopolitical and ethical terms gives a moment of inspired and productive entertainment to your ‘common man’, be it Rakyat or sunday futsal player or kampung teenager just arrived in kl or china man or lori driver or ‘ah beng’ or even a poor young local malaysian troubled kid from a broken home or homeless that just found, thanks to a place like MPO or another local organization, a pair of drumsticks or a sape . You all talk about political, ethical and social needs and issues and not even say a single word about the reason why the MPO exists, the job of the orchestra, to play music. The MUSIC itself! Not one of you says a single word about the music and recognizes that thanks to the MPO in Malaysia many people from many walks of life and professions or political sides has had, seen, enjoyed, listened, whistled or sang Joget, Dangdut, Choral music, Beethoven, Bach, Bartok, Chick Corea, Paco Pena, Farid Ali, Michael Veerapan, Zimmerman, Erki Sven-Tuur, Arvo Part, kids productions, the Petronas Performing Arts Group, the MPYO, local emerging composers, Flamenco groups, local jazz musicians, tango dancers and we’ve even had competitions for local Malaysian performers and composers, more than twice. Multiply that list times 500 times more than that… that seems like an awful lot of music, local and foreign, to bring to the audience of a country that has had very little interest in its own arts and culture (NO! I don’t work for the MPO :) despite the apparent propaganda)
but if we haven’t paid attention to the arts & humanities for decades (in fact, never in our history) its impossible to magically ‘build up’ our cultural patrimony in 10 or 20 years. As has been suggested in previous postings by intelligent people, these ‘build up’ has to start from the bottom of the ladder, primary school at the utmost latest. I have been to the MPO a good many times, every time they play a piece I happen to like and I have the money, time, means and right frame of mind. I wouldn’t say a 90% (sounds too exaggerated) but maybe a 50%of the audience is sadly not Malaysian, but that is not what worries me the most. It worries me that the local people that goes there are not young students, thinkers, artists, politicians, reporters, athletes, academicians, the intellectual side of the county. Where are they? Why is it they don’t want to come when they have this opportunity? In my humble opinion this says more about our own mentality than of the MPO’s ‘agenda’. I see in this the same sad truth, that we as a society and our government have little or no interest in the arts, humanities & culture in general. There is almost no infrastructure to support these institutions; this is reflected in the education system we go through since young. All science and technology, cold and frivolous and exact. What about creativity? sensitivity? expression? intellectual capabilities? etc..
It is just plain sad that we fail to see how important these areas (arts & humanities) are in the development of a nation. Even more so in our case since we are a developing nation (in Jeeves’s satirical response: a country with high technology and stable economy, but with a lack of exploitation of its own human and intellectual resources, what the people is capable of doing and achieving). If you think that classical, baroque, modern, romantic, musica da camara, early music, pygmie polyphony, minimalistic, opera, jazz, world (and all its myriad of subgenres), flamenco, choral, organ, kora music, mbira music, andean pipes, bambucos, russian jewish songs, sufi music, sambas, tangos, mambos salsas, progressive and symphonic rock, and much more music is music that must appeal exclusively for a small elite of people that controls most of the capital of the city and likes to be seen in newspapers and social magazines it’s obvious that (a) you have not been to the MPO before. If you have, you slept through the entire concert each time or you were thinking of the funny ponytail of the guy in front of you, not the music. (b) your schooling did not teach you how to appreciate arts and you’re probably happy with your collection of top 40 pop CD’s and being able to quote Tchaikovsky’s or Mozart ’s or any other big name composer in front of your friends in mildly intellectual conversations or event gala dinners. (c) in your particular case the MPO has failed to reach you, and how sad that you yourself spend so much money in taxes each year to maintain an orchestra (the number quoted in stupefaction!) but you don’t even attempt to attend its concerts. Do in your life something that needs no creativity please, for the sake of the generations to come. Finally, I’m absolutely certain that (d) never in your life have you ever sat down and listened to a Mahler symphony, any of them or a Piazzolla tango. You wouldn’t think of disbanding this orchestra if you had. I believe it is your kind of mentality that the people behind the MPO set out to change. I just sincerely hope that you are not an educator in our country, for our children’s sake… If you couldn’t have that culture and social environment in your life yourself, why do you want to deprive your children and people after you of that?
We rant about how much we’re having to pay as a nation for bringing literature, art, philosophy, theater, cinema & music into our lives, not processed Hollywood radio american & european pop garbage and r&b and the Bond string quartet with techno drums and voice alla’ Ennya. Instead we should be wondering where all the money goes to and why is it not being spent in schools, universities, libraries, community cultural projects, research institutes, scholarship funding, orchestras, theatres, halls, auditoriums, stadiums, sport centers, publishing houses, galerias, and other elementary delightful needs of a community instead of being squandered in a nonsense of consumism fever & consumption of luxuries and power and status quo and social status that the past generations left us with and to bear with. The poor people in our country will obviously benefit a little if we send RICE (?) to them, maybe for a week or two. But they will still be illiterate, jobless & unable to fetch for themselves. They would benefit much more if we create jobs for them, if we train the young generations, if we enrich their lifes with education, science & culture, and if we make sure that in the future generations all kids have an education with which to face life. The tools to survive on their own! What good is a single meal? why not instead find a way to give everybody the chance and means to live a successful and productive life on their own…
Still arguing why the single only solitary provider of western art music costs us so much? Btw, MPO has performed pieces by malaysian composers, hosted two competitions for local composers, among many other ‘firsts’ in our nation. Obviously the names of local people like Adeline Wong, Johang Awang Othman, Chong Kee Yong, Mohd Yazid Zakaria, or Ahmad Muriz bin Che Rose, Ng Chong Lim and many others (my apologies to them for my lack of memory) mean very little to you. Furthermore, if all of these arguments are still unacceptable to you, do I have to be german to love J.S. Bach? or russian to appreciate Shostakovitch? Music is universal, a patrimony of humanity. We shouldn’t stress our differences with the world outside of our country and use them as political or social weapons, we should be proud of them of course because they make us unique and who we are as a people, but instead we should celebrate what we have in common with the others.
Our universities, companies & institutions ARE full of foreigners, so are the train stations, airports, bangsar clubs and city pubs, beaches, malls, klcc, sunway, local colleges and universities, and full of foreigners as well are most of the cities in the world today that have airports and a tv signal. What makes me think that I have more right over the square meter of land where I stand now in the planet than any of them ‘foreigners’? they also pay taxes to our government every year, just like us. They also bring ideas and innovations into our country; they also take malaysians abroad to further their studies, research, etc, and further benefit our country. The world is a network, a huge network, and we can’t seriously aspire to be unplugged from it, its nonsensical. We shouldn’t allow ourselves to be xenophobic? haven’t we all ever heard of globalization before? attacking people of elitism, capitalism, classist superiority? your mere attack sounds awfully racist already. Hello, its the year 2008, these dogmatic sociological notions should have no place in our world anymore. The only thing they’ve brought us in our history (as a species in the planet, not just as malaysians) is misunderstandings and further social conflicts.
The day should arrive in which Malaysia is proud that people from other areas of the world (foreigners) come to Malaysia to admire its cultural production, its natural & human resources, its musical, artistic & literary life, its industries, beaches or spectacular floral, animal or gastronomical (food) variety! and not because they come to teach us how to do these things. But for this dream to come true we need to pay more attention to what happens in our schools, backyards, halls and homes than to what happens on the tv soap opera or the latest hollywood blockbuster or the latest computer shooting and killing game in the cybercafe (that’s exactly where our kids now are growing up and learning about life). By closing an innocent music provider, with political pomp & circumstance and all, you’re telling me that you’d rather have your son/daughter or your young cousins learning to ride a motorbike without helmet at the age of 13 with his friends at that cybercafe than to have them at a concert of healthy music enriching themselves as individuals.
Poor MPO, lets hope the folks at KLPAC start reaching out to a larger audience if the MPO is to disappear from the Malaysian stage.
sorry for the awfully long post… I got carried away!
The Malaysian Philharmonic Orchestra had better do something fast to make itself more acceptable to Malaysians otherwise if there is a change of government it will be in serious trouble.
Hundreds of millions of Petonas dollars have been spent on this mainly foreign orchestra, and the states where oil is produced, Terengganu, Sarawak and Sabah have the largest numbers of absolute poor citizens in this country, people who would rather have roads, schools, and economic assistance, than knowing small numbers of people in Kuala Lumpur are enjoying the likes of Mozart, Mahler and Stravinsky!
Already the 5 per cent oil revenue paid back to the states (as Wang Ehsan) is being questioned, and the figure of 20 per cent of oil revenue to be returned to the producing states is being seriously proposed. If Petronas has to pay four times more to these states, and not to forget the demands that Petronas finance new infrastructure projects like the Second Penang Bridge, I fear there will simply not be enough money for the kind of extravagance the MPO has been enjoying these past over 10 years.
The crunch may come in a matter of months (if we are to believe what the political blogs are telling us, and the main stream media is so busy trying to deny), or even sooner if the impoverished rakyat in those oil producing states suddenly realise that monies that could have gone to improving their human condition, has instead been spent subsidising mostty foreigners performing for the sake of the literati few in Kuala Lumpur!
The MPO does not exist in a cultural vacuum, existing in isolated splendor in the ivory towers of the Dewan Filharmonik. If the orchestra paid for itself as a commercial enterprise, this would not be such a big issue. But the fact of the matter is that the National Oil Company (PETRONAS) is SUBSIDISING the orchestra to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars. That makes the orchestra an acceptable target for political discourse, whether we like it or not.
If the MPO does not undertake a crash crisis management exercise, appoint a Malaysian conductor, start announcing plans to “Malaysianise,” and make itself more visible to ordinary Malaysians with a much more aggressive community outreach programme, I am afraid that the orchestra would be better advised to start practising Haydn’s “Farewell” Symphony!
I remember decades ago, when the (then) magnificent Philippine Cultural Centre on reclaimed land in Manila Bay was built at the behest of Mdm Imelda Marcos, she was asked about the tens of thousands of squatters living around the PCC, people who could never afford the price of a ticket to enter the concert hall, and she replied in her most imperious tone of voice: “It (the building) will inspire them!” Shades of Marie Antoinette’s “Let them eat cake!” Likewise, just who is being “inspired” by the MPO is the question we must ask, and honestly answer?
I hope and pray that the MPO management realises that these are dangerous times for an Imelda Marcos-type response to the legitimate questions being asked over the vast subsidies being paid out so that the few in Kuala Lumpur, like this writer, can enjoy the masterpieces of the Western Classical Music Traditions.
Richard Dorall
Dear Richard,
we’re interested in publishing your comments above as an article, or better yet, commissioning a full piece from you for www.kakiseni.com.
could you contact me by email please?
best,
Kathy
There is one thing the MPO could learn from the Philippine Iron Buttterfly, Madam Imelda Marcos.
She may have flaunted her wealth in the face of the grinding poverty of millions of her fellow citizens, and not to ever forget her 3000 pairs of shoes she accumulated, but she was also a POPULIST who knew the importance of giving something back to the people to assuage their frustrations.
She made sure, for example, that the Metro Manila Symphony Orchestra, of which she was patron, would play one of its weekend series of concerts open to the public, and broadcast live on nationwide TV on Sunday afternoons from the bandstand in Luneta Park, downtown Manila.
The programme would include some of that week’s regular concert hall repertoire, but also popular numbers. I remember we accompanied Freddie Aguilar, all dressed up like a little witch in black, and singing his international hit “Anak” to adoring crowds which had to sit through our playing Wagner’s “:Liebestod” before Aguilar came on stage with his trade mark battered guitar.
These free outdoor concerts were a hit. They introduced Manilenos to serious music, combined with traditional folk and popular modern Filipino composers, singers and performers.
That was on Sunday afternoon. On weekdays, the municipal band would perform for a half hour before the Philippine flag was lowered on Luneta Park, and I would sit there listening to the amazing virtuosity of these bandsmen playing, among other pieces, Rossini opera overtures, Souza and other well known marches. This too was another of Mrs Marcos’ outreach programmes to bring music to the people who could otherwise not afford the price of tickets to enter her Philippine Cultural Centre and to be “inspired” there by highbrow culture.
The Malaysian Philharmonic Orchestra would be well advised to make itself more accessible to the Malaysian public. It should broadcast concerts live on television. And how about playing public concerts “in the park” to make the MPO’s music directly accessible to the public? There is (or was, when I last drove by) an open-air theatre in the “Lake Gardens” which would be a suitable counterpart to Manila’s Luneta Park’s bandstand.
The MPO’ s “mistake” has been to be too exclusive, and based on a audience model requiring people to come to the Dewan Filharmonik, and not enough of utilising an alternative audience model, reaching out and taking music to the masses.
The result? A feeling that the orchestra is elitist, an image which has not been helped when the make-up of the orchestra is overwhelmingly foreign, which then plays to an audience which is largely foreign too.
As I said, Mrs Imelda Marcos knew enough about realpolitik to insist on populist cultural policies, and that, perhaps, explains, why despite all that happened to her husband and she herself in the 1980s (their ignominious overthrow in 1986), she is today, seemingly against all odds, to be “popular” in the Philippines, a popularly elected senator, her children also elected to national and provincial positions, and she is still, in the eyes of a not insignificant segment of Filipino society, rich and poor alike, and for complex (and as far as I am concerned, incomprehensible) reasons, very much THEIR Iron Butterfly..
Those world famous 3000 pairs or shoes, notwithstanding!
Richard… I’m sorry, but I am having a hard time seeing how you having a failed career as a flutist in an amateur orchestra in the Philippines (of all places!) and being a music critic for some C grade newspaper in a city that has virtually no live music scene whatsoever (with the exception of the MPO and No Black Tie) makes you qualified to shoot your mouth of with such confidence. I am embarrassed for you!
After reading all of this gratuitous banter, t’s no wonder why Singapore has left Malaysia in the dust on all levels!! With this mentality, Malaysia will remain third world until the end of time!
Is the London Philharmonic comprised of people only from London??? Is the Chicago Symphony comprised of only people from Chicago??? Is the Berlin Philharmonic made up of only people from Berlin???? Come on… get with the program. If you want to hear a symphony of local musicians, the KL Sinfonietty performs at KLPAC. You are welcome to go hear one of their performances anytime you like. If you can’t hear a dramatic difference between them and the MPO, then you have no business even listening to classical music, nevermind critiquing it.
It’s a matter of common knowledge that training in any of the arts does not go from start to finish in only 10 years. Malaysia doesn’t even have a music school to speak of while Singapore has two of the finest in Asia. And whomever claim that the SSO has a majority of Singaporians in their orchestra is delusional.
Finally, the members of the Malaysian Philharmonic (some of which I know personally) are wonderful people who have come here only to share their love of symphonic music with Malaysians. They have left their families and their home countries behind to be here for this sole purpose. The salaries that they are earning may seem outrageous to locals, but the truth is that on a global scale, it is barely B grade level. The entry level salary for more well known orchestras throughout the world is approximately double. Most of these people have enormous students loans that they are trying to pay off; some in excess of USD 100,000.
Perhaps we should audit Malaysia’s investment in F1 racing and compare that to the MPO, then calculate how many people we are exposed to that can drive fast versus play the Sibelius Violin Concerto. I think this would reveal a much more dramatic mis allocation of funds…. and that seems to be what this is all about. Drama.
THERE is an old joke. There was a budding artist, we’ll call him “Bob”, who had recently moved into a small loft. He was motivated, he was dedicated, he was prolific. In the six months since moving in, he had filled this, his little space in the world, with his pencil drawings, with his watercolours, with his sculptures.
He worked tirelessly, through day and night, occasionally stopping for food and water. He ate very little and slept even less.
But his devotion to his art left him little time to worry about life’s practicalities. Which is why, late one afternoon, he suddenly had to face his landlord and the daunting task of coming up with the six months’ worth of rent that he still owed.
“Just give me another week,” he pleaded. “I’m on the verge of something great.”
But his landlord wasn’t convinced.
“Absolutely not. That’s what you said last week. You’re not getting a free ride any longer.”
“Just think of it as an investment. Some day, when I’m rich and famous, this small crawl-space will be worth a fortune. People will peer into this disgusting hole, and in whispered tones they’ll say, ‘Bob used to paint here’.”
“Look,” the landlord said, “just pay your rent now, or they’ll be able to say it tomorrow morning.”
So riddle me this. Just how do we put a value on the arts? How do we judge its worth? Is there some quantifiable component by which we can gauge success or failure? Do such notions even matter?
Consider the Malaysian Philharmonic Orchestra and the recent revelations as to its cost.
Given the number of heated arguments that I have wittingly been embroiled in over the last couple of weeks, I think it’s safe to say that I stand among a mere handful in my belief that the RM3.5 million spent every month is justified.
To call it a waste is symbolic of the chronic and deep-rooted disdain that we have, in some ways encouraged, towards the expression and application of anything involving creative skill or imagination.
To call it a waste because it is money spent “to entertain foreigners, especially from Europe”, reveals an even greater ignorance, not just by its jingoism, but about the very importance of the arts itself.
I say that the proof of the pudding is in the eating, so I hope you’ll indulge me in a brief two-minute parenthetical.
(I have heard the New York Philharmonic perform in the Avery Fisher Hall at the Lincoln Center Plaza, I have heard the London Philharmonic play in the Royal Festival Hall, and I have heard the Malaysian Philharmonic in our very own Dewan Filharmonik Petronas. You sit back, you close your eyes, and I swear to God you can barely distinguish between the three. Although I must say that I prefer the immaculate acoustics in our own little bit of musical heaven that sits beneath 452 metres of tapering twin towers. It’s the place where sounds go to die.)
The fact remains that you get what you pay for.
Paying world-class prices will almost always get you world-class standards. Paying peanuts will get you monkeys. Something that has consistently held true in every aspect of our society.
The hall itself is maintained to perfection and with ticket prices for some concerts as low as RM8.50, it is quite possibly the most accessible venue in the world.
I have no idea as to its profitability, but that is of very little consequence. Its purpose is to educate. Its purpose is to feed our souls. It is a social service. And you cannot put a price on that.
There is no conflict between art and commerce. The debate is irrelevant. Commerce relies on clear notions of success and failure. In the arts, there is no failure; everything has value, a juncture by which is born the next piece, and the next, until finally, something extraordinary.
The naysayers and their endless jeremiads usually begin with some reverse snobbery about why Malaysians even need something so ostentatious, so lavish, so “Western”?
Why does Malaysia need a world-class philharmonic orchestra? It is, after all, something that only caters to a select few, to the beau monde.
They make the argument that the arts appeal to only the rich and the middle classes.
They make it sound like there is, in fact something innate, some inherent quality which enables a person to enjoy Beethoven’s 9th Symphony or Picasso’s Les Demoiselles d’Avignon.
But it is education that leads to appreciation. It is something that is taught and by consequence, learned. It isn’t by any means something that is intrinsic.
They then bring up the same old complaint, that by paying foreigners large sums of money, we are in fact ignoring our local talent.
Needles and haystacks come to mind. The pool is incredibly shallow. Sure, we send our children for their piano lessons and their art classes. We force them to learn the violin.
But we do nothing to encourage their appreciation. Heaven forbid they decide to take it up professionally. It was only ever meant to pad the resume.
The way we educate our children is appalling. We have successfully produced generations of competent doctors, lawyers and accountants, of young people who can do little more than add up a string of numbers, or write a coherent sentence.
We are such cultural peasants that we have misunderstood the very reason we learn music and all the arts. As it is only from such creativity and imagination can we begin to discover the solutions to our political and social afflictions.
The only way to develop a local talent pool is by exposure. Because all artists, be they painters, musicians, or writers, are those who are moved to emulate that which moves them.
We can all afford to be poets. We can afford to spend a lot more and we should. We must lose the mindset that somehow spending money on the arts is a waste, that it is in fact taking money away from something else, from something more important.
Money and resources are by no means a finite commodity. They are infinite and there should be some balance in how we channel them.
There is an old joke.
An American tourist in Tel Aviv was about to enter the impressive Mann Auditorium to take in a concert by the Israeli Philharmonic.
Enthralled by the unique architecture of the building, he turned to his escort and asked if the building was named for Thomas Mann, the world-famous author.
“No,” his friend said, “it’s named for Fredric Mann, from Philadelphia.”
“Really? I’ve never heard of him. What did he write?”
“A cheque.”
The way the BN govt scandalously wash billions of precious ringgit down the drain with white elephants such as PKFZ and rising inflation makes the MPO institution a easy scrutiny and punching bag for some quarters. Costs of rice and essential goods are rising and of course its pretty easy to say that “extravagance” such as MPO are unnecessary.
Petronas could do a lot more by offering scholarships to deserving loca talents and also make MPO concerts more accessible to public. Right now I am very worried about empty seats and increased patronage of foreigners instead of locals as I observe being a regular patron of DFP. They have done good job so far with generous student prices (I watched London Symphony last year and paid only RM 30 which is practically a steal!) and free organ recitals, but more needs to be done.
Flaws aside, the MPO has been a blessing from Heavens for local classical music enthusiasts. The concerts of Shostakovich, Mahler, Bruckner, Stravinsky and Bartok has nothing been short of world class compared with NYPO and even BPO. That makes us even the envy of Singaporean classical enthusiasts. However I am very worried when Petronas cease to make profits when our local oil supply runs out or if Pakatan Rakyat forms the govt, such “luxury” maybe short-lived.
It’s a pity also since NSO and KLPac doesn’t have adventurous repertoire as MPO does. NSO is content of playing Malay pops while KLPac doesn’t have the technical level to tackle Mahler, Stravinsky or Bartok. I’m afraid should MPO cease to exist, the Malaysian classical music scene would be thrown back to Dark Ages.
YL Tan your comments are unecessarily abrasive and I find them off the mark. Despite your ad hominems Richard is correct, MPO is an extravagance and a vanity project like the F1 project when you consider a little less than 1/3 of Malaysia’s schools lack water and electricity.
The problem not whether the MPO has foreign musicians, the issue is that after a decade and half a billion ringgit later, only 5% of them are local and foreigners have disproportionate control of the management. Our own local Datuk Ooi who has won many plaudits overseas was pushed off into resigning MPO by foreigners because she was cold storaged into doing childrens concerts. You say MPO salaries are low but its still very attractive to those from East Europe where many in MPO are from.
The bottom line is MPO is not run for the benefit of the rakyat but foreign consultants instead. It would be interesting to see how much is spent on western classical music vs Malay/Chinese/Indian/Native music at the MPO.
To those who think that the MPO is a waste of money should just have attended Beethoven’s majestic Ninth Symphony in Kuala Lumpur last Sat/Sunday - and shut their mouths. A historic and timeless classic resouning in our land for just RM20!