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| Sunday, 30 November 2003 |
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Sons and daughters of Sri Lanka Rohan Joseph Rohan Joseph was my first piano teacher and I think I was his first pupil. I had been learning how to play the recorder from his mother, Sita de Saram, who was a wonderful teacher herself, as well as being an artist of no mean ability. His father was the extremely talented journalist 'Sooty Banda'Joseph. They lived in a bohemian house at the end of a lane in Lauries Road, Bambalapitiya, surrounded by Sita's sculptures and by the raucous sounds of children playing a variety of instruments. Rohan was still a student at Royal College, some years my senior, when I got to know him. He was chubby and self-assured and was remarkably patient, for his years, with a pupil as clumsy and lacking in musical talent as I. He also had the same dead-pan method of delivering jokes and witticisms as his father, as well as his parents' genius. We used to go about a lot together, sometimes dining, in the simple manner of the day, on 'Zeppelins in a Cloud' (sausages and mash) at the Fountain Caf, in Union Place. Then he went to New York to further his career as a pianist (and later as a conductor) and we lost touch. My sister and I met him many years later, just before the first performance of Verdi's opera 'Rigolletto'. He explained to us how he had explained to President Premadasa his plan for obtaining sponsorship for musical performances and getting good performers from abroad to improve the level of Western music in this country. He told us how the President had given him his approval and how he had started the Philharmonic Orchestra (there was a lot of ill feeling about this at the time in musical circles). And he gave us tickets for the opera! I think that the performance of 'Rigolletto' and, later, of 'La Traviata' at the BMICH were the greatest contribution Rohan made to Sri Lankan music. Hitherto we had only been able to see operas as films or as video-tapes, but now we were able to experience some of the best in a hall in Sri Lanka! The not-so-wealthy were able to see and hear performances of excellence for the first time. They should have been a benchmark against which performances of both Western and indigenous music could have been measured; for the latter in particular, having a host of indifferent musicians, this is a necessity. On the basis of these performances, Rohan was invited to India to do the same for them. Alas, for a variety of reasons the Philharmonic here withered on the vine. There were to be no more operas for the less well-to-do. My personal dream, of a performance in Sri Lanka of 'The Pearl Fishers', Georges Bizet's opera set in Sri Lanka, is unlikely to come about now. Rohan's premature demise is a great loss for this country which, unfortunately, seldom looks kindly upon its own children of talent. It is a great loss for the world of music. And it is a great loss for all of us who knew him. - Vinod |
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