The conductor rumples his barong

(published in Billionaire, December 2010)

Allegro

“I brought along my barong, is it ok?”, he asks. Jojo lugs bags full of photography equipment. I have a notebook and pen. We all exchange hands and smiles. He is taller than us. The only non-Filipino. He seems quite at home.

Olivier Ochanine, Philippine Philharmonic Orchestra’s music director and principal conductor. He excuses himself to retreat to his office. We agree to meet in a few minutes in the hallway of the CCP.

Jojo begins to scout the area. He looks for lighting and background. He settles on the driveway of the CCP, fronting the fountain. The sun is bright. The guards look unsure of what we’re up to. They obediently follow our instructions and remove a trashcan blocking Jojo’s shot.

“To be here now”. John Lennon was quoted as saying on what rock and roll means. To me, the same goes for classical music, eternal as to be always in the present.

Olivier arrives. We all look around awkwardly. I suggest we do the interview first. We sit in one of the benches.

A Frenchman who journeyed around Europe and practically grew up in the US. The traveling “has certainly helped me understand music better. Expanded my sensibilities.” Music is a story and every musician essentially deals with the telling of that story.

“As I grow older I’ll definitely be able to tell the story better. Take Tchaikovsky 5. I will keep noticing new things about it. 50 years later, I’ll still be looking how to do Tchaikovsky.”

“Must it be? It must be! It must be!”, wrote Beethoven on the score sheet of his String Quartet in F Major, Op. 135.

Adagio

Mercifully we move to the photo shoot. In fact, Jojo was shooting the whole time we’re talking. I notice Olivier never loses awareness of Jojo’s presence. He has done all this before.

In shirt and jeans, we go to the driveway. He gamefully poses along the steps of the CCP entrance. Smile. Click. We move inside the CCP. No sweat.

Jojo found a decorative doorway in front of the Tanghalang Nicanor Abelardo. Perfect for the shoot. Olivier asks if it would be better if he gets his barong. He goes gets it.

“It’s not too rumpled, is it?” We tell him it’s meant to be rumpled. That actually it looks better with the rumple. He looks puzzled. Shrugs. Jojo aims. Olivier doesn’t know what to do with his baton. I sat on the carpet watching them shoot. Click. Click.

Why not a shot outside with you in barong? Jojo asks. Ok, says Olivier. And he walks outside. A casual, natural way of walking, to a suggestion that seemed the most natural. For that moment.

"Ah, Mendelssohn!", Snoopy listening ecstatically to Schroeder.

The next day, at rehearsal, he greets me cordially. But clearly music is on his mind. He moves in front of the orchestra and smiles. All nonchalance. I expect him to tap his baton but he doesn’t. The violinists in front keep talking but he doesn’t mind.

“I played the flute and the bass.” That was his life previous to conducting. “I think it has made me more understanding of the orchestra. I fight for the orchestra as I was one of them before.” It certainly made the PPO musicians comfortable with him. Him they do not fear. He is them. They work with him. He grins to make them all quiet. They start.

The music for today are Filipino songs. It’s for Corazon Aquino’s death anniversary. Dulce Amor sings In My Heart. It was moving. The musicians know it. Olivier acknowledges it. A majestically slow Bayan Ko follows.

Somebody from the wind section mistimes. Olivier sings the notes to demonstrate the force necessary for that portion. No wisecracks. But many banter among themselves. Smile at the ready. They listen. They start again.

“One aspect of a country’s growth depends also on its cultural components – this includes the arts, which in your country are yearning to be shared by Filipinos with fellow Filipinos but also with the rest of the world. The amount of talent in this country is impressive.” Letter of Olivier Ochanine to Philippine President Noynoy Aquino.

Members of the PPO go in and out but the rehearsal goes on. He is imperturbable. The musicians absorb his tranquility. The Frenchman who wandered around Europe and studied in the States who now lives in Manila. He consciously or not “gets” the Filipino. And the music? They nail it.

“Olivier Ochanine: loves his job, the musicians he works with, and the city he lives in. Nice trilogy, no?” Facebook entry, 17 August 2010.

Scherzo

“Basically, I'm for anything that gets you through the night - be it prayer, tranquilizers or a bottle of Jack Daniels.” Frank Sinatra.

“Olivier Ochanine: having a nice San Miguel..... then off to bed.” Facebook entry, 24 August 2010.

“Technology has, in a way, made it more difficult to take a more unique approach.” Globalization certainly made it easier for more people to access more music. But, he notes ruefully, “one can also easily get lost in the shuffle.”

“I’ll always be learning.” To gain wisdom in music is vital. There is today a certain degree of an “artificial quality to conducting in general. The emphasis is on technique. But you take a musician like Vladmir Horowitz or Ashkenazy, they certainly experienced more in life and it showed in their music.”

Herbert von Karajan. Zubin Mehta. George Solti. Leonard Bernstein. Great names. Leopold Stokowski shook hands with Mickey Mouse in Fantasia.

“At the most fundamental level, a conductor must stress the musical pulse so that all the performers can follow the same metrical rhythm.” (Encyclopedia Britannica, on the “Conductor”)

Olivier Ochanine: “As a conductor, the orchestra is my instrument of choice.” But isn’t classical music too Western? Irrelevant for a poor developing country like the Philippines? “Perhaps.” But he brushes the idea off. “In the end, the importance of the music is not really the melody but how it changes your mood, what it does to you.”

He talks about bringing the music closer to the common folk, to children, to prisoners in jail. He talks of gigs in malls. But, he grins, “I’m a purist” and admits that malls aren’t the ideal places acoustically.

On May 29, 1913, the Rite of Spring, with its intense depiction of primitive fertility rites, premiered and promptly led outraged Parisiens to riot.

“I haven’t really observed anything in that regard”, on whether the Filipino’s Catholic upbringing affected how they play or appreciate music. In fact, the musicians seem quite open to whatever music needs to be played.

Admittedly, however, the audience could do with a little more introduction to other works of classical music. Their receptivity to, say Mozart’s Eine kleine Nachtmusik would be more enthusiastic than to “the Turangalîla Symphony by Messiaen.” But that’s part of the job, to introduce the old with the new, to promote music to Filipinos.

Three days before the concert he celebrates his birthday. A gazillion greetings on Facebook. Many from Filipinos. The taga-Prances is at home in Manille.

Olivier: “Music should be inspiring and at the same time inspired.” Albert Einstein: “It would be possible to describe everything scientifically, but it would make no sense; it would be without meaning, as if you described a Beethoven symphony as a variation of wave pressure."

Sonata

In 1687, conductor Jean-Baptiste Lully died after stabbing his foot during a concert with a large staff that was used at that time as the baton. The baton has now been changed to the light stick that you see nowadays, harmless, with as yet no eye being poked by it on record.

Details from the concert program - 8:00pm, 10 September 2010, CCP. La Musique Francaise (Sayaka Kokubo, viola. Olivier Ochanine, conductor).

Olivier takes to the stage. His stride is relaxed, quick. He shakes hands with the first violinist. He faces the audience, smiles. Happy to be here. That you’re here. “We're glad that you're here. The orchestra needs the audience, the energy that it gets from the audience." He is comfortable in his skin.

Olivier: “Where I am is where I am.” Also, “where I am is where my home is.” He is certainly at home on the stage. On the podium, facing the orchestra, the audience at his back. He looks like one immersed completely in the place. And yet detached, free.

The first piece is Berlioz’s Harold in Italy. Olivier good-naturedly told the audience to hold their applause until the end. They clap at every break.

After the intermission, they play Milhaud’s Le Boeuf Sur le Toit. However, it is with Honneger’s Pastorale d’Ete that the orchestra truly hits its stride, approaches sublimity.

“An orchestra is a psychological being, with different personalities. What makes an orchestra special are the inner voices, the colors that you feel but can’t really hear.” (Olivier Ochanine)

By the last piece, Maurice Ravel’s Bolero, the orchestra’s musicianship is as tight as the snare drum that drives the music. Finish. The audience wildly erupts in applause. Olivier returns to the podium, grins and jokingly threatens: “Ok, you asked for it.” Strauss’ Thunder and Lightning Polka. But it is the PPO’s profoundly intimate rendition of the Intermezzo from Cavaleria Rusticana (by Pietro Mascagni) that the audience is sent out to the warm, salty Manila night. Light steps, happy, strangers smile at each other. Life is good.

“In the end, the importance of the music is not really the melody but how it changes your mood, what it does to you.”

Encore

“Olivier Ochanine: hmmmmm, did I mention I love my job? oh yeah that's right. I did.” Facebook entry, 20 August 2010.