Chamber Music society celebrates Schubert

By Nicolas Colombant

JAKARTA (JP): The cast of the Yayasan Musik Internasional chamber music society reads like the classical music version of the Globetrotters: Coming soon to a recital hall near you.

Lead violinist I.G. Bagus Wiswakarma is unpacking his bags and publicly showcasing his talents in Jakarta for the first time after seven years in Germany, of which the last two were spent as principal second violinist for the Hamburg Symphony Orchestra.

Artistic coordinator Iswargia R. Sudarno is flying in from France after a two-week European tour with the Trisutji Kamal Music Ensemble, which took him from Italy to Sweden, and before that he was performing solo in Bangkok, Thailand.

Pianist Halimah Brugger is performing her swan song, before she embarks on a new career as associate piano professor at the state university in Boise, Idaho.

If all planes land, nine regular members and newcomer Bagus will reunite tonight to perform an all-Schubert instrumental chamber music program at Gedung Kesenian, Jakarta.

This is the second of two concerts in the "Schubertiade" series presented by the chamber society to celebrate the second centenary of Franz Schubert's birth.

The first was an all-Schubert vocal program presented at Erasmus Huis on Oct. 31.

The Austrian composer died at the age of 31, leaving behind him the reputation of an introvert, roaming sentimentalist.

During his time, he performed mostly as an accompanist on the piano, entertaining the 19th century elite Viennese society with lyrical and romantic music. His specialty was turning the finest poems of German literature into long sonatas.

Schubert was also known to write melodies on napkins in cafes of the Austrian capital, for a beautiful girl just passing by, or to reawaken a memory which tortured his soul.

He was a troubled idealist who dreamed of pastoral scenes with virgin shepherdesses running through fields of edelweiss.

But since his death, especially in the last 50 years, Schubert's stature has grown. His Unfinished Symphony is now recognized as a part and parcel of the basic classical music repertoire alongside Beethoven's Fifth.

Schubert left behind him more than 600 compositions, covering all the genres and many themes such as the unfulfilled, the circle and the cycle, pantheism and the triumph of death.

To reflect this versatility, the Yayasan Musik Internasional chamber music society will be performing four pieces, starting with a somber Notturno and ending with a triumphant quintet.

Notturno in E-flat Major Opus 148 will feature Halimah Brugger on piano, Sulistyo Utomo on cello and Bagus on violin. For Bagus, it will be his first performance with the chamber group, after spending the last decade in Germany under the tutelage of the violin's very best, Yehudi Menuhin.

Tonight, the home crowd will be able to determine if the 31 year-old Balinese from Yogyakarta is indeed, as touted, the most talented violinist of his generation.

For Halimah, playing with Bagus and Sulistyo will be a culmination of sorts, before she turns the page on her Jakarta experience. She has been living 20-plus years in the metropolis, teaching, developing and promoting classical music.

"This is what it is all about. Foreigners and Indonesians coming together for the love of classical music. We are not many so we need each other to make classical music vibrant and progressive," she said.

Enjoying one of her last nasi bungkus (take-out rice) in the week leading up to the performance, the departing academic director of the music school explained that the chamber music society has been established to give the many talented teachers of the music school a chance to perform.

"For a classical musician who is alone, it's a very bleak world out there. Like writing without being published, playing the violin in the confines of your own bathroom is not a very fulfilling experience. The chamber music society gives musicians the opportunity to come together and perform."

The second piece under the soft lights of Gedung Kesenian will be the fiery Arpeggione sonata in A minor D.821, with Sharon Eng on viola and Ary Sutedja on the piano.

Eng will have the difficult task of playing a composition meant for six strings with only the four strings of her viola.

Schubert wrote the three-part sonata with the Arpeggione in mind, an instrument that has long been obsolete. The guitar-like instrument, held between the legs and played with a bow, was perhaps only mastered by his brother Vinzenz.

Eng will tackle a rearrangement written by her own mentor, Austrian violist, Paul Doktor.

The complex and equally challenging Rondo in B Minor, Opus 70, will follow, showcasing Bagus on violin, accompanied by Linny Sugianto on the piano.

After a brief intermission, the concert will conclude with Schubert's most famous chamber work, the boisterous quintet for piano, violin, viola and double bass in A Major, called Die Forelle, or less exotically translated as The Trout in English.

The title comes from another of Schubert's creations, about a happy trout living in a turbulent river. The tune of that song was inserted into the quintet's grand finale, and is therefore the name for posterity.

On violin, 18-old virtuoso Utako Furuse will be giving her final performance in Jakarta, before moving on to Tokyo, Japan.

She is one more globetrotter in the glorious cast of cross- border musicians who will have to put jet lag on hold tonight to give classical music lovers a fitting homage to the growing legacy of Franz Schubert.