Ananda makes impressive Jakarta debut

By Emilie Soeur

JAKARTA (JP): Some are only excellent pianists but he is a musician, said Slamet A. Sjukur, the famous Indonesian composer, of Ananda Sukarlan's recital at Gedung Kesenian.

The words of Jean Cocteau were a fitting tribute, particularly as the concert, part of the Jakarta Performing Arts Theatre International Festival 1997, was the debut of the Indonesian composer in his homeland. He is based in Europe, dividing his time between the Netherlands and Spain.

The recital, titled The Child of Our Time, took the audience on a musical journey through the 20th century.

It was an extension of Ananda's previous concentration. At the request of the Spanish impresario Colien Honegger, granddaughter of famous composer Arthur Honegger, Ananda has recorded 38 pieces written in the 20th century by 38 Hispanic composers.

The purpose of this Album de Colien was to provide an overview of musical composition in the Hispanic world as the 21st century approaches.

Ananda's performance here was perhaps even more ambitious as he set out "to write a musical history book of the 20th century".

Twenty-four pieces, all written in the last hundred years, were gathered together under different themes -- "The Incurable Romantics", "The Avant-gardists" and "The Fun and the Funky".

Ananda's aim was to weave a musical tale of what he considers the most diverse century of achievement in history.

Romanticism, breaking of tonalism, jazz music; our century does indeed appear prolific in musical style experimentations. But Ananda winced when it came to the question of style and he rejected the classifying mania.

According to him, each piece had its own individual style. "The music of the 20th century is like a big family made up of individuals with their own and unique personality," he said.

Precisely. How to describe the style of the 22nd piece of the concert, for instance. Though Play piano, Play no.5, composed by Friedrich Gulda, is clearly influenced by jazz, it is impossible to classify it as pure jazz music.

It is the same for the last piece, Yaz, composed by Robert Zuidam. How to classify music in which influences of Bach, jazz and Jimi Hendrix are sensed concurrently ?

Choosing the most representative pieces could not have been an easy task. Ananda selected pieces according to originality and quality criteria. But the pianist makes it clear right away that originality must on no account be synonymous with inaccessibility.

Inaccessibility

Inaccessibility is the worst fault of contemporary music, he said, and a piece which is not understood upon first playing will probably never gain an audience.

"Beethoven's pieces were perhaps not understood for the first two performances, but by the third they were accepted."

Originality merely for originality's sake does not mean anything, he stated, and music that purports to be "intellectual" will not survive the test of time.

"Today, all the musical experiments have already been done," he said. "All we can do now is exploit the results of that research."

Creating something new nowadays amounts to seeing old things from a new point of view. Computer are one way as they offer great possibilities to revisit the past with new materials.

Last Friday's program was accessible to the public. Ananda was aware that nobody at the end of the concert would be able to profess enjoyment of all the pieces.

That was not his aim. The only purpose of was to show the reality of this century's music.

The program was as varied as the century, from pieces like Illes de Feu I composed by Olivier Messiaen in 1949; Variationen zur gesundung von Arinushka written by Arvo Part in 1976; or Anandanissimo a piece specifically composed for the pianist by Dieter Mack this year.

The first is the dark and tortured outpouring of the trauma of World War II. The second is a smooth and melodious piece that hungers for solitude, inviting listeners to close their eyes and let their minds wander along with the melody.

Ananda's major interest in working with composers. The pianist does not interfere in the writing itself. His intervention amounts to long discussions with the composers so that the pieces are rendered the closest to his personality.

Anandanissimo leaves one wondering about the real Ananda. It appears to be based on confrontation. For instance, while one hand plays lyrical, soft tunes, the other is racked with rhythm and speed.

A sign of some schizophrenic pathology? Ananda denied it right away.

Ananda's playing was like respiration. Breathing in, breathing out, he blew life into his music. And this sparkle of life, enlightening the music, forged the communication between the audience and the pianist.

This was the necessary condition for listeners to open their minds to new and sometimes unknown composers.

Ananda Sukarlan will perform tonight at 7:30 p.m. at Erasmus Huis. The program will be more general than the Gedung Kesenian recital but all the pieces are from this century.