Brass group ties early music to contemporary tunes

By Helly Minarti

JAKARTA (JP): The concert was about to start. Yet the only entrance at Erasmus Huis in South Jakarta was still open and all lights were on. The audience was still confused when the sound of trumpets was suddenly heard from outside the concert hall. This was followed by trumpets played backstage.

Three members of Brass of the Moving Image, a brass ensemble from Germany, got up on stage. They played several tunes -- like those played in ancient Rome to herald a public announcement -- before Rudolf Barth, director of the Goethe Insitute, gave an introductory speech.

Six young lads and a soprano then fueled the night with myriad compositions spanning classic to contemporary. They showed a range of tonality based on a sextet of three trumpets (Rochus Aust, Arpad Fodor, Matthias Kamps), a horn (Adam Lewis) and two trombones (Michael Bittler and Otmas Strobel).

"We mixed the program so everybody could find his own line in one of the songs," said Aust, 29, who is also the group's leader.

Brass of the Moving Image was founded two years ago. The young professional musicians from different parts of Germany met in Junge Deutsche Philharmonie (Young German Philharmonic), home to Germany's best music students. They all shared the same passion to play in a brass chamber orchestra.

"But unlike strings, brass music is relatively newly developed. Compared to the 500 or 600-year-old strings, brass instruments have only been played in the last 120 years ago," added Aust.

This has necessitated adapting some compositions for brass.

For their Jakarta audience they wrapped up a well thought out program with the full use of the multilayered possibilities of an extraordinarily rich diversity of sound.

The first piece represented the English Renaissance -- Shakespeare's era -- when music and art were venerated. John Adson's Four Courtly Masquing Ayres is a composition personifying the period when the masquerade emerged as favorite royal entertainment. Arranged by Aust, this composition was played by all six instruments.

Janis Cimse's Dziesmu Rotas, composed 200 years later, is a Baltic composition which took its inspiration from the existence of chorus groups since the romantic era. Cimse is known for written interpretations of old Latvian folk songs. These traditions were ignored during the country's period as a constituent republic in the Soviet Union.

"It wasn't until five years ago -- when those new nations had their freedom from the former Soviet Union -- that we really could explore (the composition)," said Aust.

Soprano Rita Bielieauskaite, a Lithuanian who studied music in Karlsruhe, Germany, sang the lyrics.

But the surprising element came from the youngest composer, Vykintas Baitakas, 27, who also studied music in Karlsruhe. His contemporary piece, RiRo, was composed earlier in this year especially for the group. Arranged by Aust, it is a one-to-one trumpet-soprano, a duet of Aust and Bielieauskaite.

The melody is a collection of short yet mostly high tones out of Aust's eloquent trumpet, accompanied by the equally intense- curious cacophony from Bielieauskaite. Sometimes she seemed to be putting all her strength into reaching high notes in an uneven scale, before she plunged into low ones by mumbling two consonants together in a stacatto-like effort.

"How is the vocal written in the text? It is simply by writing the letters or sound, with musical direction as in the other score. But it also adds other pictorial hints to show the intensity it requires," Aust said.

Classic Johan Sebastian Bach came as the fourth number, Drei choralvorspiele, a choral prelude before an intermezzo in the form of a witty composition by Aust himself, Schiffe versenken (Sink Down the Ships). The idea to compose this funny piece came from a popular game in Germany usually played by two people.

All six brass musicians sat in two rows, face-to-face, each representing a group against the other. Instead of sitting on the high-level stage, they chose to take a place right in front of the first-row seats.

"Actually I'd like to sit among the audience so they will take a side and share the excitement," said Aust, who emphasized that this number is definitely not a "serious" composition. "It's just a play where I translate the instrument's sound as the way to attack enemy's ship or to indicate other action."

The end result is never the same. "Tonight my group was beaten by the opponent, next time could be different. It is also flexible to play this with more than two players taking turns."

The next piece was a soprano-trombone duet, Zodzal ir Magija, composed in 1995 by Felikaas Bajoras, another Baltic composer who has been living in America since the mid 1980s.

The program was closed with enchanting tunes of Tango Apasionado from Argentinean virtuoso Astor Piazzolla. "The original tango is a folk piece from Argentina," Aust said. "And unlike the popular tango people love in Europe, the original did not use any percussion. That's why people in Argentina think that their tradition somehow has somehow been ruined."

He transcribed Piazolla's Tango into a brass ensemble which brought all fascinating elements of this expressive music: the collage of a grandeur, melancholic, bittersweet and passionate harmony. They ended the applause of the audience -- who filled three quarters of the seats -- with one additional piece.

Brass of the Moving Image will be busy on tour in various countries until the end of this year when they plan to record. They left for Singapore one day after their performance in Erasmus Huis and then bounced back to present their second show before a limited audience here in celebration of 150th anniversary of Siemens. They later flew to perform Baltic numbers in the Music Festival of Nations in Germany.

"We simply play all kinds of music -- very old up to very new," Aust said. "It can be classic, local, Louis Armstrong, contemporary, anything."

What is special about the group? "What is best is we can play what we really want. The basic technique stays the same. It's the style that makes the difference in playing the early music and contemporary composition."