Hong Kong has often been called a “cultural desert”; while this is both uncharitable and less than entirely accurate, few question that Hong Kong punches below its weight culturally and has long failed to make optimal use of its many natural advantages. John Duffus’s recent memoir, Backstage in Hong Kong, provides a blow-by-blow narrative as to why this has been, and arguably remains, the case.

Ironically, the Hong Kong Philharmonic, which takes up the first half of the book, largely proves the rule: it is one of the few Hong Kong cultural institutions that truly passes muster at an international level. Success has many fathers, as they say, but Duffus was arguably one of them. He arrived in Hong Kong in 1979 to take over as general manager of an orchestra that, unbeknownst to him, didn’t live up to its billing; it was, to paraphrase him, rather a mess. The then Chairman, John Mackenzie, “had no interest in classical music, no clue how to run a professional symphony orchestra and even less idea how to solve the growing list of problems in the Philharmonic.” The newly appointed music director Ling Tung was unqualified and self-interested; indeed, “the Philharmonic had never enjoyed the quality of conductor that inspires musicians continuously to give of their best.” Expat musicians (often inexperienced) were paid a lot more than their local Chinese colleagues.

In a tenure of less than a decade, Duffus—by his own account admittedly, but it tallies with what one remembers from the time—set the Philharmonic on a trajectory toward excellence (although I think many would argue that it has only really come into its own in the past decade or so). Good management seems, as it often is, to have been made up of common sense, standing up for quality, a good Rolodex, and knowing when to compromise.

 

The expat memoir—recounting a long and storied career in “the East”, filled with wry anecdotes, dinners with the great and good, and observations about life’s lessons—is a professional hazard for book reviewers in Hong Kong. Duffus, perhaps inevitably, has included some of that, especially in the second half of the book, which is a relative romp through a much longer and more commercially-oriented post-Philharmonic career (there are photos of him with José Carreras, Kiri te Kanawa, Luciano Pavarotti, Isaac Stern, Yo-Yo Ma and Andrew Lloyd Webber), but he thankfully also includes a lot of brass tacks about the design of the Hong Kong Cultural Centre, the workings of the cultural apparatus of the Hong Kong Government, Hong Kong’s enduring lack of suitable performance venues and the long-running saga of the West Kowloon Cultural District.

Much of this (somewhat sorry) story will be familiar—and will make the most immediate sense—to those who lived through it; sometimes, though, it’s hard not to laugh. When the Hong Kong Stadium in Happy Valley was renovated in the mid-1990s “with the intention of hosting large-scale pop concerts for an audience of around 40,000 in addition to major sporting events like the hugely successful annual Rugby Sevens tournament”, it was found that the resulting noise levels would violate environmental ordinances.

 

One senior civil servant ridiculously went to the media and suggested there was a way around the regulations. Concerts could in future just not feature amplification. Instead the unamplified sound should be relayed to headphones handed out to each member of the audience, and gloves used to avoid noise from applause.

 

Some readers (at least those of a certain âge) will have attended some of the concerts Duffus played a part in. I was at Pavarotti’s 1990 concert at the Exhibition Centre and José Carreras’s concert the next year (having heard both on stage and Pavarotti at Boston Symphony Hall, I remember being somewhat disappointed) and Ileana Cotrubas singing in Macau (who was marvelous; I had always wondered how that came about).

And although Hong Kong is a city of more than seven million, in terms of “degrees of separation”, it can often resemble a village. Anyone remotely interested in the arts, and whose time in Hong Kong overlapped Duffus’s, would likely have known, or been at most one hop away from, many of the people who make an appearance: Peter Moss (who had a second career as a writer), Helen Yu (erstwhile Director of Cultural Services), Klaus Heymann (now of Naxos), Burton Levin (the American Consul-General), Lo Kingman (now running Musica Viva), Douglas Gautier (of the then Hong Tourist Association). Backstage in Hong Kong a very human book: although settles some scores, he is also quick to recognize ability, good intentions and the constraints people were working under.

Those who are currently involved in developing and extending Hong Kong’s cultural footprint could likely benefit from the history contained in Backstage in Hong Kong. One is however left with the feeling that Hong Kong’s calling in the performing arts lies not so much in putting the city on the map for tours of the likes of Cats, the “Three Tenors” and musical superstars (as appealing as those may be), but rather in finding something self-sustaining that is more rooted in Hong Kong itself: something, perhaps, more like the Hong Kong Philharmonic.

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Peter Gordon is editor of the Asian Review of Books; he has also been active in arts and culture since 2000, most recently in opera.