Classical music scene paints a rather mixed picture

Classical music scene paints a rather mixed picture

By Gus Kairupan

JAKARTA (JP): December l996. Time again for a flashback and a
look at the music scene.

Classical music, that is. It's a rather mixed picture that
reveals itself, though I must confess that this year I have not
been attending as many events as I would have liked. However,
this doesn't mean that I have not been aware of the goings-on in
this city.

Progress there certainly is, especially on the part of
Indonesian musicians who have made classical music their forte.
But the pace is that of a snail suffering from arthritis in the
knees -- if snails have knees, that is.

So give a big hand, ladies and gentlemen, to these stalwarts
who are struggling on their own with nary a nod of recognition
from those official quarters whose responsibility it is to -- at
least -- encourage them. But nevermind. There are very good
Indonesian classical musicians, and if one or two make it onto a
much larger stage (and there will be some, I assure you) it is
because they've done it by themselves without the slightest
support from any department or corporate interest.

Orchestras

The mixed picture shows good and bad, alarming and
encouraging, with small groups (or individuals) overshadowing the
large ones. Let's start with the orchestral scene. Nothing much
has been heard from the Twilight Orchestra (TO) since it was
featured in a television program during the Idul Fitri holiday
last February.

It could have performed again after that, but I very much
doubt that. If they had, it would have been what the music circle
calls an "event," meaning a commissioned concert for some
corporation or charity occasion. Public concerts are indeed not,
or rank very low, on the list of TO's priorities. For all intents
and purpose, TO seems to have moved into oblivion, thus joining
the Jakarta Symphony Orchestra (JSO), which bit the dust way
before TO gave up the ghost. If JSO still exists it would only be
in the documents of the Adhi Suara Foundation, its parent
foundation.

There remains the Nusantara Chamber Orchestra (NCO) as the
sole provider of orchestral music. NCO is at least constant,
giving performances every other month. It has shifted venues from
the Jakarta Hilton to Gedung Kesenian Jakarta, which,
acoustically speaking,l is the better place for it, though its
stage is not large enough for the group.

As for the quality of performances, well, that still leaves an
awful lot to be desired. One comment I overheard at NCO's last
concert was Untuk Indonesia sih udah cukup (for Indonesia, it's
good enough) and checked myself in time from making a spectacle
of myself by throttling the person. The comment indicates that a
tenth rate orchestra is good enough for this city that prides
itself on being a world capital. The abysmal thing is that
whoever is behind NCO (I think it's still the Yayasan Nusantara)
does not (or will not) realize that Indonesian conductors are --
to put it mildly -- inadequate.

There isn't much wrong with the musicians (not that all is
right with them). They are quite capable of producing remarkable
stuff when directed by a good conductor. I saw this myself when
Australian conductor Philip Green was here to direct a group of
musicians the majority of which consisted of members of the
Capella Amadeus string ensemble.

Winds and brass players were recruited from elsewhere and
included musicians who play in the NCO and a number of underused
instrumentalists.

What they performed (it was a fund-raising event for social
programs of the Catholic church) was real music, and would have
been much better if the numbers with piano accompaniment had been
left out of the program. Otherwise, it was a highly enjoyable
concert and proved in no uncertain terms what can be achieved
with a good conductor.

Phillip Green has been here before working with the NCO but
whatever good he has achieved then seems to have disappeared,
which is not an isolated instance. He followed in the footsteps
of other conductors who came, worked with the orchestra, and upon
leaving the group they worked with reverted back to its usual bad
habits.

This leads us to the Capella Amadeus string ensemble which I
reviewed about a month ago. The group, with a core of about a
dozen players, is the only one that performs with any regularity.
It is very much a one man effort -- or one woman effort, rather,
for the driving force behind it is Grace Sudargo, who also heads
a school for string instruments in Jakarta.

Besides giving public performances, Capella also does events
and demands for the group seem to be on the rise. There are two
things they may need to do: venture out of the late baroque and
classical periods on which it has been concentrating up to the
present, and guard itself from falling into the trap of becoming
overly dependent on events.

The fate of the Twilight Orchestra and the Jakarta Symphony
Orchestra are good examples of what happens if you have to dance
to whomever plays the tune but is in fact quite ignorant about
music. As regards Ms. Sudargo, she was also the concert master at
the concert conducted by Phillip Green, and I must say that in
this country she's the only one fit to occupy that second most
important position in an orchestra.

Individual efforts

This is where some brighter instances provide hope. One
person that merits considerable praise is Trisutji Kamal --
Indonesia's one and only composer who blends Indonesian and
Islamic musical idioms with those from the West. Her own
background is Western music, piano and composition, and she has
given performances in several countries, the latest in Thailand
some months ago. In her tours overseas she presented compositions
that combined duo piano with Balinese percussion. It is probably
too much to say that these excursions were roaring successes, but
the foreign ears to whom she brings her work are, at least, used
to one universally known element -- the piano. The fact that her
works are rooted in impressionist styles makes them easy to
listen to.

Of the other musicians who have come to the fore and show
signs of getting stronger are pianists Linny Sugiarto and
Iswargia Sudarno, who specialize in music for duo piano (two
pianos) and piano duets (one piano, two players) and have already
appeared before. The two presented a rather daring program last
November in which the oldest composer was Debussy. The rest were
very modern and it's there that the daring applies. You don't
get to hear a Dieter Mack or Messiaen composition at any musical
events. Pianists, whether singly or otherwise, always stick to
the usual Chopins and Liszts, which is alright of course, but one
also wants to hear what today's composers have to say.

Also quite active over the past year was pianist Ary Sutedja
who is concentrating very much on chamber music these days. She
performed in a concert which was at the same time the debut of
the all-women ensemble called Classical Nuances (Nuansa Klasika)
which also included oboist Soun Youn Yoon from South Korea,
clarinetist Karen Ellis-Chong and violist Sharon Eng. The latter
two hail from the U.S. and have lived here for a number of years.
Classical Nuances has so far not given a second concert.

So much for the 1996 scene as regards classical music
activities. It doesn't differ much from 1995 though the Twilight
Orchestra and Jakarta Symphony Orchestra were still doing a bit
of work. Then, too, it was the efforts of small ensembles and
individual musicians that were much better than the orchestral
presentations. And with things as they are, this pattern is bound
to remain for quite some time.