Somtow Sucharitkul is finally appreciated. "That's why I'm still here."

In 2012, the Siam Sinfonietta youth orchestra won first prize at the Summa Cum Laude Festival in Vienna with Mahler's First Symphony and recently won a Gold Award in Los Angeles. Grompots say the orchestra is only appreciated for its exotic Asian roots.

'In Austria they won first prize', says conductor Somtow Sucharitkul, 'not because they were a group of music-making monkeys, but because they simply played better than the Austrians.'

This is thanks to the 'Somtow method'. Before the performance in Vienna, Somtow took the orchestra to Mahler's hometown in Czechoslovakia, to a nearby forest to experience 'naturlaut' and the orchestra played in small Czech churches and inns 'to absorb the essence of the music'.

After a long stay in the US, Somtow is back in Thailand and not only that: he also exchanged the writer's pen for the conductor's baton. In the late XNUMXs, Somtow, after his education at Eaton and Cambridge, turned his back on Thailand because with his fusion of Thai and European melodies couldn't get their hands together.

In the US he wrote thirty novels, among which it was unofficially banned Ripper of Siam and the semi-autobiographical Jasmine Nights. He won several prizes with it. But Thailand kept beckoning. He returned in 2011. "I suddenly had a vision that I had to enter the monastery." The attack on the Twin Towers inspired a requiem performed by the Mahidol University Orchstra. A job at Mahidol was not an option (jealousy de metier, says Somtow), but he stayed in Thailand and formed the Bangkok Opera, the Siam Philharmonic Orchestra and in 2009 the Siam Sinfonietta youth orchestra.

And unlike more than thirty years ago, the halls are now filling up. For example, in a recent version of The Silent Prince. “The room was filled with people who had never experienced a performance like this before. They were really touched emotionally by it. I'm really appreciated now. That's why I'm still here.'

His musicians run away with him. Nath Khamnark, second trombonist in the Sinfonietta: 'He is my idol. Under his conductor's baton I feel that everything is fresh and alive. We make a painting together, as it were.'

Somtow has not completely given up writing. He is currently working on the triology The Dragon's Stones, in which a Hindu god is born in a Catholic orphanage in the slums of Khlong Toey. 'The most satisfying thing in the world is to sit in a room and create something.'

(Source: Brunch, Bangkok Post, July 21, 2013)

Photos: On July 24, Somtow will conduct Mahler's Symphony no 8 (Symphony of a Thousand).