Christina McEwan
PERRY SO is on the spot. This young conductor, 33, is returning to Cape Town to open the Spring Symphony Season with two concerts, one of which is an Homage to Sibelius. So has loved Sibelius’ music ever since he was a child. Lately, as he enters his mid-30s, he is increasingly drawn to the pensive and self-doubting moods that emerge in Sibelius’ later years. But in the Second Symphony which he will be conducting, there is only a hint of this introspection – this youthful symphony is particularly memorable with its broad palette of orchestral colours inspired by a long visit to Italy.
“This iconic symphony is filled with soul-stirring optimism for a Finland that will be free, both politically and culturally. The grandeur and the arching melodies embody the hope of creating their own future, however grim their situation was becoming within the Russian empire,” So recounts.
The historical reflection leads to an admission that he can be something of an antiquarian. “My big discovery this week is that Mahler’s conducting copy of Beethoven’s Eroica Symphony is down the street from my house at the Yale University library. I'm so excited – like a kid in a toy store!
“Manuscripts, old scores, letters from composers to their wives, their old houses – these are a crucial part of my process for getting into a piece of music.” His wife Anna is writing her doctoral thesis on Russian history at Yale, which, So says, “at least partly explains why I'm constantly aware of how much the past is always lurking everywhere.”
Although he has only spent a few days in Finland, So lived for six months in the neighbouring city of St. Petersburg, Russia, where he had won the first and special prizes at the Fifth International Prokofiev Conducting Competition. There, among other things, he learned to appreciate the harshness of the climate. “Each time I left home I had to check that I wasn't going to die from an icicle through my skull. I came away with a deep appreciation for how much it took to create great music under these circumstances.”
Our conversation turned to his excitement on returning to Cape Town for the third time, and how he has changed over the last few years.
“I have hopefully grown as a musician since my previous visits! I find I am spending ever more of my time trying to find better answers to questions I once thought I had figured out. Every musician will bring something of themselves into the music they perform. On my part, I'm much more at peace than I've ever been with the schizophrenic upbringing I received in Hong Kong – a colonial education in the twilight of empire, with thousands of years of Chinese culture floating around! I hope I'm finally starting to understand how to be this person in the music I perform.”
While America is his home at the moment, he continues to work around the world, more and more in mainland China. “That part of the world is an essential part of me. The curtains have closed on the Hong Kong I grew up in, but that led me to discover what a huge, diverse country China is, and I love spending time there.”
After Cape Town he is off to Guangzhou and Shanghai, all the while teaching at The Manhattan School of Music in New York.
“I absolutely have to spend a few weeks each year with young musicians – their enthusiasm and fearlessness power me for months afterwards.” He is off also to Spain, including Tenerife in the Canary Islands, conducting in the magnificent hall designed by Santiago Calatrava overlooking the Atlantic Ocean where the CTPO played in in 2000 in the 16th International Festival of Music.
So was an inaugural Dudamel Conducting Fellow at the Los Angeles Philharmonic, and recently concluded four years with the Hong Kong Philharmonic Orchestra as Associate Conductor. His 2012 recording of American violin concertos with German violinist Alexander Gilman and the Cape Town Philharmonic was awarded a Diapason d'Or.
His mentors include Edo de Waart and Esa-Pekka Salonen.
So’s two concerts are on Thursday, October 22 when he conducts Pallavi Madidhara performing the Second Rachmaninov Piano Concerto, Goitsemang Lehobye singing Orchestral Cycle on Poems by Ingrid Jonker and Prokofiev's S eventh Symphony; and the Homage to Sibelius with Maria Solozobodova playing the Violin Concerto on October 29, with Finlandia and the Second Symphony. Both are at the City Hall at 8pm.
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