Malaysia is a little country obsessed with superlatives. It boasts - and boasts is the word - the longest mural (wrapped around the main prison), the tallest flagpole (95 metres), the tallest towers (Petronas, their claim of scraping the sky at its highest man-made point soon to be usurped by Shanghai), and now it wants the best orchestra in Asia.
With the Malaysian Philharmonic, which celebrates its second birthday this autumn, it might well be on the way to achieving its dream. The Hong Kong Philharmonic and China National Symphony should watch out: Malaysia means business.
The idea first started with the Petronas Twin Towers: two giants of steel built both to house the national petroleum company and to give Kuala Lumpur a proud, unmissable architectural focus. Between the twins is a huge shopping mall that puts Pacific Place to shame in terms of size and prices, and one of the most exquisite concert halls to be built at the end of the 20th century.
The Dewan Filharmonik Petronas is a building of wooden interiors and spectacular acoustics, an 840-seater room that is Malaysia's first dedicated concert hall - and home of Malaysia's first dedicated professional orchestra. Ian Smallbone of IMG was the consultant hired, as he describes it, to put 'life in an empty box' - to fill that hall with music that people are going to want to hear.
'Petronas wanted to start an orchestra at a very high level, and keep it there,' Smallbone said, calling it 'one of the most heroic acts of musical patronage in the late 20th century'. First the consultant team sorted out a few major problems - there was, for example, no ticket office in the original plans. Next, they did the market research: were the members of the Kuala Lumpur paying public willing to spend their evenings listening to classical music? And if so, what did they want to hear? They discovered - a prediction now borne out by experience - that the typical audience member was young, female and Chinese. 'It is wonderful in Asia. In Europe you see plenty of grey heads and few young people, here you see young people, excited about hearing new things.' The consultants suggested filling the hall with a mix of international performers - and so far have attracted top musicians including Sir Neville Marriner, the late Yehudi Menuhin and Jose Carreras - with a top international quality resident orchestra. 'We advertised worldwide,' said Smallbone. About 3,000 musicians from various countries applied and during three hectic months in 1997 IMG sent its experts around the world to interview 600 on the shortlist. The resulting orchestra, directed by Dutch conductor Kees Bakels and with resident conductor Malaysian Chean See Ooi, comes from 22 countries.
A scan down the list of first violins, for example, shows concert masters from Norway and Germany, a co-concert master from Britain and musicians from the United States, Ukraine, Hungary, France, the Netherlands and Australia. The story is similar looking down the lists for other instrumentalists; there are four Malaysian musicians in the list and all have studied overseas. 'There is no conservatory in Malaysia,' said Smallbone, 'although we want to start fulfilling a similar role.' A state-run oil company is accustomed to making long-term investments, and Petronas has been no different in its approach to starting an orchestra. If there are not enough local musicians then they will help make them, and perhaps in 15 years' time the orchestra will - like the Hong Kong Philharmonic - be able to claim 50 per cent local input. But until, and possibly after, that time the orchestra will help train local talent.