Gifts to the Orient

Five hours before the concert, a platoon of coolies moved into the open-air concert area and enveloped it in a cloud of insecticide to kill off the mosquitoes. An hour later, two coolies armed with spools of adhesive tape started affixing location tags to the rows of folding seats. At C-hour-minus-30 minutes, the national flags of Viet Nam and the U.S. were in place. As the darkness gathered, the men of the orchestra took their places, and promptly at 8 p.m. the conductor raised his baton. Moments later one more corner of Asia was introduced to the strange and wondrous sounds of a live Western symphony orchestra. Occasion: a first concert in Saigon, Viet Nam, by Manhattan's touring Little Orchestra Society.

In an eight-week tour touching eight Asian countries from India to Japan, Founder-Conductor Thomas Scherman and his 45 musicians got a reception to set their heads awhirl. Everywhere, crowds were eager, the reviews fine. Shouted the audience in Kowloon, Hong Kong: "Bravo! More! More!"

To provide Asian audiences with a rare sample of contemporary U.S. music, Conductor Scherman performed works by Wallingford Riegger, Virgil Thomson, Frederick Jacobi, Aaron Copland, discovered that they were just as warmly received as the repertory regulars--Beethoven, Mendelssohn, Mozart.

A highlight of the tour proved to be a subtle blend of Occident and Orient: the world premiere in Madras, India, of Symphony No. 13 by California-born Henry Cowell, a composer who has perched for many of his 62 years like an elfin Janus atop the steep divide between Eastern and Western music.

The "Madras" Symphony was scored for a normal symphony orchestra minus trumpets, trombones and tubas. Added were tablas (tuned Indian hand drums) and the jalatarang (a set of eleven porcelain rice bowls of different pitch, depending on size and thickness). The players of the tablas and jalatarang had their entrance cues but were otherwise free to improvise, if necessary, around Cowell's themes. It was a languorous, curiously hypnotic work, with a wavering melodic line that occasionally died away before syncopated flights of the tablas. Said one Indian observer: "A mood as lovely as twilight."

Last week in Japan, at the end of its tour, the Little Orchestra played still another Cowell gift to the Orient: a two-movement piece with a "Japanese feel" titled Ongaku. Strongly flavored with the haunting sonorities of early Japanese court music, Ongaku was a success with the older members of the audience, but left some of the younger ones, whose musical diet is increasingly Western, faintly puzzled. Said one: "Frankly, it's too Japanese for us; it's a bit over our heads."

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