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.