From Homeless to House-Proud: Brazil’s ‘Other’ Music

by Larry Rohter / The New York Times (August 24, 1999)

São Paulo, Brazil-It was logical and fitting that when the São Paulo State Symphony Orchestra inaugurated its striking new concert hall here in July, the centerpiece of the debut program was Mahler’s Second Symphony. That work, after all, is known as the Resurrection, and both the Sala São Paulo and the orchestra that now resides there were celebrating a rise from the ashes.

Just a few years ago the orchestra, founded in 1953, was practically homeless. At one point its 97 members were reduced to rehearsing in a school auditorium, their schedule dependent on the willingness of the school’s principal and parent-teacher association to make space available.

But that was before the government of Brazil’s most important state began an effort to persuade John Neschling, a Brazilian conductor living in Switzerland, to lead the orchestra. Initially reluctant, he acquiesced in 1997 only after the authorities agreed to a series of basic conditions, one of which was a permanent home for the orchestra.

Anticipating doubts about selling such a project, Neschling, 52, took an approach calculated to appeal to Brazilian sensibilities, urging officials to consider “what happens to a good soccer team if it doesn’t have a stadium,” as the maestro recalled in an interview here early this month. “It made them understand we needed a place to work.”

That place turned out to be a cavernous abandoned train station on the faded outskirts of downtown that was designed in Louis XVI style in the 1920s. The choice may have seemed odd, but when the American acoustic consultant Russell Johnson arrived to supervise the project, he quickly discovered that the dimensions and characteristics of the station lent themselves to the ambitious vision.

“More or less by accident, the original architect made this mammoth waiting room almost the same length and width as a handful of the great old concert halls in Europe,” Johnson said in a telephone interview from New York City, where his company, Artec Consultants, is based. “And of course it has plenty of height, which enabled us to put in a ceiling that goes up and down, so we can adjust the acoustics of the room to the events going on onstage.”

This all resulted in a 1,509-seat hall whose most innovative feature is its flexible ceiling, composed of 15 motorized and individually controlled panels whose position can be changed in minutes. A new rear balcony and boxes seating spectators except when a choir is required were installed around and behind the main stage without disturbing the 32 imposing Greek columns that remain the hall’s most distinctive visual attraction.

The revamped building also has ample rehearsal rooms and a recording studio. Work has begun on a documentation center and archives devoted to Brazilian composers of the 19th century and earlier, including Carlos Gomes and a group of largely forgotten mulatto musicians of the 18th century described by Neschling as “liberated slaves who wrote first-class music, church choirs and Te Deums.”

Although Brazil has always been a very musical nation, building a top-flight orchestra was a huge challenge: Even though it seems as if every one of the country’s 165 million people plays an instrument or sings, the musical energies are directed almost exclusively at popular music, not the classics.

“I had to convince people that classical music is part of the musical expression of a country anywhere in the world,” Neschling said. “I had to remind people that the language of the classics is as important as the language of pop and that Brazil had this language for three centuries but forgot it.” As a composer he wrote the scores for such films as Kiss of the Spider Woman and Pixote.

For state officials who provided $35 million for the renovation, the hall is a symbol of even grander aspirations. São Paulo is Brazil’s richest and largest city and state, with 18 million people in the metropolitan area and 16 million in the interior. It is an industrial, financial and agricultural powerhouse that in the words of Rodolfo Konder, the municipal secretary of culture, yearns to be recognized as “a world-class city.”

The city has been regarded as the country’s foremost cultural center since at least 1922, when the series of exhibitions and seminars known as Modern Art Week established a national agenda for literature, art and music for decades to come. Abroad, however, São Paulo has always been overshadowed by its flashier, more exotic and better-known rival 200 miles to the east, Rio de Janeiro.

Marcos Mendonça, secretary of culture for São Paulo state, said: “We want to transform the city’s image so that it is not only a great economic center but has an intense cultural life. We want people to come not just to do business.”

To attract local audiences that do not normally attend symphony concerts, ticket prices have been kept low, with the best seats selling for just over $10. The city and state have also sought to encourage private sector support for their plans with tax laws that offer rebates to companies contributing to the arts.

Indeed, the state and city authorities envision the project here as the anchor of a much larger complex of museums and galleries. Next door, for instance, the headquarters of the political police during military rule from 1964 to 1985 are being converted into a conservatory and theater, though Mendonça promised that “a few of the cells where prisoners were held will be preserved for historical reasons.”

Mr. Neschling and state officials are clearly looking forward to presenting his orchestra to audiences abroad and showing off the hall’s acoustics to visiting foreign orchestras. “There is a circuit, and I want us to be on it,” said Neschling, a Brazilian who was born and reared in Rio de Janeiro.

The São Paulo State Orchestra plans to tour Latin America in 2001 and Europe in 2002. Performances at the Sala São Paulo by the Vienna and Royal Philharmonic Orchestras are scheduled this year, and the Berlin and Chicago orchestras are due here in 2000.
Mr. Johnson said the auditorium “may turn out to be one of the really top-flight concert halls anywhere in the world acoustically, including in Europe.”

Musicians who play here regularly seem to agree. Darrin Milling, a bass trombonist who is one of several Americans and Russians Neschling has recruited for the orchestra, said, “What is truly unique and a great advantage with this hall is the ability you have to tailor the acoustics to the audience and the piece.”

“I sit there in amazement that I am playing in one of the best concert halls in the world,” added Milling, 31, who has performed with the Philadelphia and New World Symphonies. “I’ve played in places like Cologne and at the Kennedy Center, and for me, this is the dream gig.”

In addition to the infusion of foreigners, the reshaped orchestra includes 16 Brazilians who had been playing in orchestras in Europe or the United States but who welcomed an opportunity to come home. Neschling maintains that his ensemble is already “one of the 50 best in the world” and, aiming high, cites the Chicago Symphony Orchestra under Fritz Reiner as its model.

“São Paulo is not less important than Chicago,” he said. “So why not have an orchestra like Chicago?”