Exquisite poetry on a new piano at Erasmus Huis

Exquisite poetry on a new piano at Erasmus Huis

By Gus Kairupan

JAKARTA (JP): You only have to press one key to know that the
Yamaha S-6 piano at Erasmus Huis, officially inaugurated
recently, is something special. Its sonority and tone quality are
ravishing, and of a type that may well be unequaled in Jakarta.
Yamaha probably has the lion's share of the piano market in this
country but none, I dare say, come anywhere near the quality of
Erasmus Huis' new piano. Or pianos.

You see, the Dutch Cultural Center early last year launched a
drive to purchase a new grand piano, and the enthusiasm was so
great that the collected contributions from Indonesian and Dutch
companies and individuals were more than enough to buy two
pianos. So, besides the exceptional new grand piano, Erasmus Huis
also has an upright and the quality of the latter is equally
impressive. No other piano in this city, Yamaha or other, sounds
as beautiful as either of these two. It hardly needs mentioning
that they are in good hands -- the quality of Dutch care and
maintenance assure their future.

When you have a piano like Erasmus Huis' Yamaha S-6 and want
to introduce it to the music-loving segment of the public, it is
no less than appropriate to have a top-ranking pianist to play
it. Such a one is Rian de Waal, internationally acclaimed as the
Netherlands' most outstanding pianist.

There is little need to list the competitions and prizes he
has won, or the major orchestras he regularly performs with, or
the compositions dedicated to him, or the recordings he has made.
All this, although very important, recedes to the background if
only because music is an art of the moment, of the period that it
is happening. And the period of about two hours that Rian de Waal
filled last Tuesday and Wednesday was a listening pleasure that
one does not often come across in Jakarta.

Changes were made in the program on the evening of Jan. 16,
the first part of which turned into an all-Liszt section. I admit
to having had some slight misgivings about this because I am not
a great fan of Liszt, although I appreciate the enormous
contributions he has made to music. But maybe this is because
pianists, local or otherwise, tend to concentrate on the
compositions of Liszt's earlier period which are so full of
pianistic pyrotechnics and wizardry as to make one wonder whether
he had put them in just to show off. The piano, in his days, was
a relatively young instrument, and Liszt was unquestionably the
greatest performer of music for that instrument. No wonder he did
not lack what today would be called groupies (his good looks were
a big asset, too), though one should in no way put the likes of
countess Marie d'Agoult and princess Caroline Sayn-von
Wittgenstein on the same level as the grimy teenyboppers of
today.

What Rian de Waal played that evening were compositions of a
much later period and included Funerailles, Benediction de Dieu
and three song transcriptions, Dante Sonnet, Widmung and
Fruhlingsnacht. The originals of the last three were written by
other composers. I forget who composed the Dante Sonnet, but the
latter two are lieder written by Robert Schumann. The word sonnet
is the operative word here as it points squarely to poetry. So do
lieder which are actually poems by such great literary figures
like Goethe, Hofmannstahl and Rilke. With these compositions
Liszt appeared to have turned his back on pianistic fireworks.

Rian de Waal opened the recital with a transcription of an
organ prelude and fugue by J.S. Bach which exhibited the new
grand piano's amazing capacities, as well as his marvelous
control and shaping of colors. The deep sonority of a single
sustained note in the bass, with three different melodic lines
floating effortlessly on top of it, is proof of de Waal's genius.
De Waal used to be an organist, but if he is very much at home
with the mathematical precision of Bach, he is just as adept at
the poetry that shines through the countless piano compositions
of the 19th century. He also played Chopin and showed with the
Barcarole that to this greatest of all piano composers, rules
were meant to be broken, and that good taste and continuity were
all that mattered.

But it was the Liszt compositions, bereft of often excessive
sounding decorations, that were the most impressive pieces of the
evening. I still have some reservations regarding Liszt -- except
when his compositions are performed by pianists like Rian de
Waal.