Dutchman Edo de Waart, the artistic director and chief conductor of the Hong Kong Philharmonic Orchestra, said in an interview that like many local performance groups, the city's oldest and largest orchestra is suffering from a lack of government support and subsidies, even as the administration pushes ahead with its grand 40-hectare "cultural hub.''

"I am amazed that one of the most important projects in Hong Kong history is omitting youth arts education and a concert hall. It's the strangest decision, bordering on the ridiculous,'' de Waart said.

The HK$40 billion West Kowloon project provides no answer to Hong Kong's chronic lack of appropriate performance venues for the Philharmonic, he said.

``There is no good orchestra in the world which does not have its own home, its own hall smack in the city center.''

The Hong Kong Cultural Centre at Tsim Sha Tsui provides a concert hall with 2,019 seats, but de Waart said it has ``mediocre'' acoustics and is too big for any local performance to fill regularly.

The Hong Kong Philharmonic cannot secure three consecutive weeks of bookings there and there are no other suitable venues in the city center.

``The Sha Tin and Tuen Mun town halls are just not convenient locations, and they're multipurpose halls. They're not built for world-class musical performances.''

The government's ``Invitation for Proposals'' for the West Kowloon project makes no mention of a concert hall, and does not require an arts school. Instead, it stipulates that the site's ``core arts and cultural facilities'' must include a theater complex comprising three auditoriums with at least 2,000, 800 and 400 seats respectively and a 10,000-seat live performance venue.

``For a city with no opera company of its own to build a 2,000-seat theater, it most probably would have to rely on flying in unknown numbers of performance groups because no home group will be able to regularly fill it. It's promoting glitz - a culture of events, not a culture of continuity. It's the completely wrong way to do things.''

The ``glitz'' factor has been played high in West Kowloon. Bidding developers have scrambled to secure partnerships with internationally acclaimed museums and performance groups.

Dynamic Star International, a joint bid by Cheung Kong (Holdings) and Sun Hung Kai Properties, has ties with the Pompidou Centre in Paris and the Guggenheim Foundation in New York, as well as a tie-up with Andrew Lloyd Webber's The Really Useful Company.

More recently, Henderson Land, another bidder, is reportedly fostering ties with the Musee D'Orsay in Paris.

De Waart said the government should take another look at West Kowloon and devise a coherent cultural policy by consulting professionals, officials and the public. To his knowledge the government has never consulted the Philharmonic on its needs.

``The Cultural Centre has no windows. West Kowloon is exactly the same. It is windowless, figuratively.

``This [lack of consultation] happens everywhere to governments too arrogant to ask the people who actually work in these industries.''

De Waart is also highly skeptical of why arts education and development is not mentioned in the whole West Kowloon project.

``Education is extremely important... if we want to keep a place's culture we have to perpetuate it.''

The internationally renowned conductor, who came to Hong Kong last September after 10 years as chief conductor of the Sydney Symphony Orchestra said he was ``baffled'' by how Hong Kong can call itself ``Asia's World City'' when even its flagship orchestra is struggling to survive and is not provided with a permanent home.

The government has been cutting its subsidy expenses granted to local performing arts groups through the Arts Development Council and the Leisure and Cultural Services Department.

In the last three years, groups including the Philharmonic and the Hong Kong Sinfonietta have suffered cuts of 5-6 per cent in their subsidies.

Grants to the Hong Kong Philharmonic Society fell from HK$62.5 million in 2002-3 to HK$59 million in 2004-5.

In the coming year alone the groups expect to face another cut of more than 4 per cent.

``I have never seen a budget this tight in the last 40 years,'' de Waart said. ``We are barely surviving. If funding is cut further we will have to fold the orchestra.''

sylvia.hui@globalchina.com