Archive

 

 

 

 

 

 

The golden jubilee celebrations are in full swing. The sound systems at the theaters, particularly the Godrej and the Jamshed Bhabha have been redone at great costs and the acoustic quality of the Experimental Theatre has been enhanced by the use of reflectors and a change in the flooring.
Three concerts conducted by Martyn Brabbins, the legendary music director of the English National Opera, two of which featured Beethoven’s 9th Symphony along with a choir of more than 100 choristers from India and abroad; and the fourth, a tabla concerto played by Zakir Hussain and conducted by Zane Dalal have started the season in February. But much more is in store.
"We are planning to compose in a classical mode along with Indian instruments,” says Khushroo Suntook who has steered the organization for nearly 20 years, first as vice chairman, and then as chairman, following the demise of NCPA founder Dr Jamshed Bhabha in 2008. "The most logical point of congruence is percussion with the tabla and the human voice, and tabla maestro Zakir Hussain and two vocalists are preparing a composition for the occasion,” adds Suntook.
As part of the celebration, the Symphony Orchestra of India (SOI) founded by Suntook has just returned from a phenomenally successful tour of the UK. The Orchestra performed at Birmingham, London, Cardiff, Guilford and Edinburgh. Before the concert of the SOI on February 25, 2019 at the Cadogan Hall in London, Lady Valerie Solti, wife of the famous conductor Sir Georg Solti, presented a photograph of her husband as well as his baton to the Orchestra as an acknowledgement of the creation and the wonderful work of the SOI.
But Suntook is not a person contented with the status quo. Looking ahead, he states, "My job today, apart from bringing higher and higher standards to the performances at the NCPA, is to see how we can make a career out of our culture. We are in the process of training teachers and we would like to also create training courses for administrators, which is a completely different ball game from corporate management and administration.” Artistes, he says with a smile, can be very capricious people and handling them can be worse than treading on eggshells. He is also keen on setting up a course in art journalism as he feels that there is a lacuna in this area.
Theater performance is the next item on his agenda. Suntook has been liaising with a senior representative of the National Theatre, London, to set up a theater community on the same lines as that of the SOI — a first-class company irrespective of nationality. "I’m about to finalize a tie-up with this gentleman and we hope to produce two shows before the end of the year,” he says.
The brainchild of J. R. D. Tata and Bhabha, the NCPA has come a long way since it was formed as a public trust in June 1966 under the name of National Institute of Performing Arts. It was established with a grant of Rs 40 crore from the Sir Dorabji Tata Trust on a government-allotted plot of reclaimed land at Nariman Point because Bhabha was keen that Bombay have a hub akin to the Kennedy Centre. Its present name was adopted and registered in November 1967. Rather than wait eight years for the reclamation to be completed, Bhabha chose to commence activities on the first floor of a building which was made available by the late Madhuri Desai who was a trustee of the Bhulabhai and Dhirajlal Desai Memorial Trust. It was in these premises that then Prime Minister Indira Gandhi inaugurated the institution on December 29, 1969.
The Little Theatre, equipped with a multipurpose auditorium and a high-tech recording studio was inaugurated in 1975. Bhabha’s vision of an auditorium where 1,000 people could hear the sounds of Indian instruments without electronic amplification led to the development of the Tata Theatre. When Gandhi was invited to inaugurate the Tata Theatre in October 1980 she quoted a Sufi saying: "If I had two loaves of bread, I would sell one and buy hyacinths to feed my soul.” The Godrej Dance Theatre was inaugurated in 1985, The Experimental Theatre, a versatile 300-seat black box theater venue, the following year and the Piramal Art Gallery in 1987.
Probably, the jewel in the crown is the magnificent 1,109-seater Jamshed Bhabha Theatre with its unique acoustic and visual facilities which was inaugurated in November 1999 to provide a platform for national and international artistes. During the construction of the theaters, Bhabha would personally attend to every detail, be it the selection of a grand piano or the installation of a small dimmer. As cinestar Anupam Kher had earlier commented, for an artiste, "your bio data is not complete if you have not performed at the NCPA… the kind of awe, warmth at this theater…the excitement before, the jubilation after…I haven’t seen even in better equipped theaters…In this theater you bend down in respect.”
 The entire estate of Bhabha was willed to NCPA. In 2014, when the historic Bhabha bungalow, Meherangir, was auctioned, it fetched a record price of Rs 372 crores. Much of what NCPA has achieved is thanks to Suntook’s personal contacts and friendships, the Stuart-Liff Music Library at the NCPA being one such example. "George Stuart and Vivian Liff gave us the whole library and connected the whole world of classical music to me,” he says. He fondly remembers his mentor, John Freestone, who was a collector and who used to write in the ‘Collector’s Corner’ section of the Gramophone. Suntook met him at the age of 13; Freestone took him out for lunch and then took him home and played records and he has been hooked ever since. It was a great friendship that lasted till Freestone’s death.
The highlight for Suntook has been "the creation of SOI, the country’s first fully professional symphony orchestra in August 2006. It was a labor of love and a result of a great deal of persuasion,” says Suntook. "It would have never taken place without the team work of Marat Bisengaliev, the music director, and Zane Dalal, associate music director.”
Journalists from the British Press found it difficult to believe that one could create an orchestra of this caliber in India in such a short time and under such difficult conditions wherein the entire orchestra gathers only twice a year for concerts. The SOI is not restricted to two performances in a year; it has a core group of musicians who reside in Bombay throughout the year. "Many of them are teachers and great emphasis is placed on teaching and developing the musical potential amongst the youngsters in Bombay,” says Suntook.
Miranda Heggie, in her review in The Arts Desk (February 20, 2019) wrote that she believed the SOI "was going places” and praised "their excitement, sense of discovery and real zest for music.” She felt that the lead violinist, Adelina Hasani’s solos in Scheherazade "were exquisite as she played with a caramel-tinged tone.” Fiona Maddocks, in The Guardian (February 24, 2019), gave both the Vienna Philharmonic and the SOI a three-star rating out of five. "Brass and woodwind showed their strength. Strings still have to develop a fully integrated sound to take the Orchestra to the next echelon,” she noted. Hugh Kerr in The Wee Review (March 4, 2019) wrote that the SOI was "of a comparable standard to European orchestras.”
When people criticize the number of Indians in the orchestra (around 16), Suntook responds, "The Liverpool Symphony Orchestra has players from 21 nationalities, The Berlin Philharmonic has performers from more than 25 countries, Manchester United has two English footballers and the so called ‘all-English’ Chelsea team only has a single Englishman. We have two dedicated persons, Jehangir Batiwala and Nikhil Sardana, who scour the length and the breadth of India in search of players of the highest quality for the SOI. Additionally, one of our initiatives, the NCPA Special Music Training Programme brings a professional level of teaching to gifted young musicians, with the long-term aim of growing the number of Indian musicians in the SOI.” 
The list of leading conductors (Charles Dutoit, Carlo Rizzi, Martyn Brabbins, to name a few) and internationally renowned soloists (Maria João Pires, Augustin Dumay, Zakir Hussain) with whom the SOI has worked is impressive. Will robots ever take over conducting? "I hope not,” says Suntook. "Robots don’t have a heart and even if emotions are introduced, they will have to be programmed.” This is one of his main grouses against orchestras today. They are efficient, the players possess extreme skill and prodigious ability but, as a result, music making has become more standardized and several of the orchestras have lost their soul. "Nothing in the world,” he maintains, "can ever replace the human heart or soul.”