Planet Carlos
A Regular League of Nations
After his last PDX performances last month, it was off to Kuala Lumpur for Carlos Kalmar, where our Uruguayan-born, Austrian-bred music director led the Malaysian Philharmonic in two consecutive weekends of concerts that had to be an unusually international experience, even by his standards.
The first of those concerts featured American trumpeter Jon Dante in Armenian composer Alexander Arutiunian’s Trumpet Concert, along with works by Leoš Janáček (he was Moravian, of course) and Dmitri Shostakovich (Russian, obviously). The very next weekend, Kalmar was back on the podium for performances with the great French-Cypriot pianist Cyprian Katsaris (who played Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 21) and symphonies of Franz Joseph Haydn and Ludwig van Beethoven (that’s Austrian, Austrian and German, for those still keeping score).
(An aside: Kuala Lumpur’s orchestra performs in what must be the world’s most dramatically located concert venue, the Dewan Filharmonik Petronas, a 10-year-old music hall that sits dead center between the Petronas Twin Towers. That’s the world-famous Cesar Pelli-designed skyscraper which was, until recently, the tallest building on the planet.)
Between concerts, Kalmar found a moment to send us this report:
Right now I'm in a very interesting place, both musically and personally. It’s a good orchestra and a very nice hall.
The orchestra was built as a part of a large corporation (the Petronas oil company). It's not easy to find many Malaysian classical musicians, so the orchestra is a mix of more than 23 nationalities – including quite a number of Americans, by the way.
And classical music – at least in the form of live concerts – is not part of what Malaysian people consume in terms of culture. Therefore, the orchestra struggles with audience numbers. But they keep working, and it is very interesting to see a western orchestra in a Muslim country. The future will show whether this can be ingrained into Kuala Lumpur’s society.
Aside from that, this is, of course, a city of different smells, different food, different people. Downtown, where I spend most of my time working, is quite a mix: Asia meets the West and the Far East, I would say. People of all colors, in a huge variety of dress.
Once I get out of the city, I want to see how modern architecture clashes with the more traditional style here. Definitely worth a trip as long as you are ready for the heat and humidity. We are in the "mild" season (meaning it's a little bit colder than usual; hat translates to only 80 or 90 degrees Fahrenheit). Once you get away from all the air conditioning, you really sweat.
Home for the Holidays
After he leads the highly anticipated All-Tchaikovsky concerts at the Schnitz Dec. 6-8, Kalmar heads back to his “other” home – Vienna – for the holidays.
Very quiet holidays, that is.
“I try to stay away from the buyer's craziness that happens during the month of December,” he tells us. “The end of the year and the start of the New Year are always times for thoughts, for goals to be set, for introspective moments. I try to be low-key if the workload allows me that.
“This year I do not intend to do much. January is very intense for me – 31 days of work without pause – so it is good to have some time to gear up for that.”
