TOKYO -- The Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, reveling in the success of its highly acclaimed tour of Asia, heads home today with one goal in mind for the future -- to get back to Japan as quickly as possible.
"If we're not back within three years, the tour will have been wasted," said Music Director David Zinman. "We made real inroads into the Asian market, but touring is only good if you do it continuously."
The orchestra's concerts were thunderously received in South Korea, Taiwan and Japan. But it was in Tokyo, which shares with London and New York the distinction of having the world's most sophisticated audiences, that the reception was warmest.
The BSO's three sold-out concerts in Suntory Hall, the nation's premier venue for music, were compared favorably by prominent Japanese critics to those of the Berlin and Vienna philharmonics, long considered the twin peaks of the orchestral world.
"This autumn we heard the Vienna Philharmonic, Berlin Philharmonic and lots and lots of other big names from Europe," said Shinichuro Okabe of NHK, the influential Japanese national radio and television network. "But the performances by the Baltimore Symphony were really special, really unique."
fTC Masa Kajimoto, president of Kajimoto Concert Agency Co., Japan's most important presenter of classical concerts, called the BSO's Suntory performances "the most successful debut by any orchestra in more than 10 years." But, he added, "it will be wasted if the orchestra does not return soon."
The orchestra's continued touring is more than a matter of prestige and CD sales, which were brisk in Tokyo record stores after the Suntory concerts. The simple truth is that nothing brings an ensemble together the way a tour can.
For the past month, everyone from the orchestra's top executives to young players fresh out of the conservatory roomed next to each other every night, ate breakfast together every morning, and suffered together in crowded airports and on long bus trips.
"You get to know people you have been playing next to for years," said trumpet player Edward Hoffman. "And while we all know we have a terrific management team, you don't get to see it in action at home. Here you do, and you get to say, 'Thank you.' "
"On the bus trip back from Takamatusu, people were telling old )) war stories from tours in the old days," added veteran principal oboist Joseph Turner. "There were kids in the orchestra who hadn't heard them, and I was glad they did."
The symphony's players also come home with increased confidence in themselves and their music director, whom they ++ feel conducted with renewed freedom and exhilaration that motivated them.
"When he let go, we let go," said trumpet player John Vance. "He got to let out what was inside him and that's why we got to give the performances we did in Suntory Hall."
"I felt freer because they played so well," Mr. Zinman said. "Their level was so high that I felt able to take things for granted."
All of this produced performances that transformed an interpretation of Rachmaninoff's Second Symphony that was superb in a performance at Baltimore's Meyerhoff into one that ++ was unforgettable in Suntory.
And it made performances of Copland's "El Salon Mexico" and Stravinsky's "Firebird Suite," which had been well-organized but dry and tentative in Baltimore, bloom with color and warmth in Japan.
"The splendid conducting and musical knowledge was deeply impressive," said Takuo Ikeda. chief music critic for Nihon Keizai Shimbun, one of Tokyo's most prestigious dailies. "Most
American orchestras," he added, "rely on big sound and European orchestras on their traditions. Baltimore pushes music out in a new direction. I think that Japanese audiences have gotten the word that there are more than five great orchestras in America."
By the second and third evenings at Suntory, word was clearly out.
In attendance at the concerts, and busy backstage afterward, were top executives from such important record labels as
Decca, Deon, Telarc and Philips, as well as Norio Oagha, the music-loving, powerful chairman of Sony Corp.
This was the BSO's first tour since it visited Europe in 1987. If
nothing else it proved that the symphony will need to tour more regularly than it has in recent years to maintain its momentum.
"An orchestra is like a racehorse, it needs to race," acknowledged BSO executive director John Gidwitz. "I've been talking to all the top promoters in Europe and Asia. They all tell me the same thing: that an orchestra must return to the region every third or fourth year.
"Since we can't afford international tours in successive years, a logical pattern emerges: an international tour every other year, alternating Asia and Europe between less expensive domestic tours."
The question is, will the orchestra be able to afford even that?
"That remains to be seen," Mr. Gidwitz said. "But if we are to take our place among the best orchestras in the United States, we must enter a new phase that includes regular touring."