Italian ensemble creates intimacy
Italian ensemble creates intimacy
By Arif Suryobuwono
JAKARTA (JP): Italian food made in Jakarta may taste the same as the original, but Italian music, especially string music, is a different matter. To savor authentic Italian music one has to listen to the original.
The Italian Embassy knows this very well and the result was a concert by Nuova Cameristica on Monday.
"One of the youngest and the best chamber music ensembles in Italy," said Italian ambassador Mario Brando Pesa at the Regent hotel on Monday.
The hotel's grand ballroom was a splendid place to hear the ensemble perform. The room's architecture is simple, yet mighty and elegant. The gaudy anti-AIDS campaign slogan projected on a wide screen seemed intolerable.
The concert was a charity gala held for the Indonesian AIDS Foundation. The campaign was part of its programs to commemorate the Dec. 1 World AIDS Day.
Only the violin family of the 10-year-old ensemble was present Monday night. The 14 performers played the violin, viola, violoncello and double bass.
Pizzicati added zest to the mechanical bowing which started with Tomaso Giovani Albinoni's concerto seven opus number five and ended with Luigi Rodolfo Boccherini's La ritirata notturna per le strade in Madrid (The Night Retreat Through The Streets of Madrid) in the first part.
The pizzicati, which contains Gaudeamus Igitur, the song usually sung on graduation day, made for tantalizing breaks during Antonio Vivaldi's concerto in G-major.
But the most refreshing pizzicati were performed on the cello and double bass for Vivaldi's work and Boccherini's nocturne. The cellos' low pitches interrupted the singing tones of their tenor brothers.
Added to the thrill was the alternating lower sounds from the double bass made by bouncing the bow. However, Bianca Fervidi's dying strums on cello which closed Vivaldi's G-major seemed a bit awkward. After all, fingers, especially when let loose, sometimes go their own ways.
After the intermission, Alessandro Rolla's concerto for viola in E-flat major on solo viola was played wonderfully by Emilio Poggioni. St. Paul's Suite from Gustavus Theodore von Holst closed the night with an invitation to dance. It started with a jig and ended with a dargason, 16th century English country dance. The finale blended Greensleeves into the folk music.
Intimacy
"We want to create an atmosphere of intimacy towards the audience, as if we were playing among friends," one of the ensemble's founders, Claudio Bellasi, told The Jakarta Post.
That was why he chose the lively St Paul Suite to invite the audience to dance with the ensemble. Since intimacy can also be evoked through the imagination of nights and dreams, he also opted for Boccherini's favorite dynamic pianissimo in La ritirata notturna.
Since Bellasi treats the audience as his friends, it is logical for his ensemble to play without a conductor.
"By playing without a conductor we create informality," he explained.
"Playing with a conductor is easier," he said, "You just follow his command. In Italy, conductor-less ensembles are not many. Only two or three," he added.
Moreover, "without a conductor, we have more freedom to do what we want," said the violin lecturer of the Conservatory of Milan.
And, of course, the Milan-based ensemble does not need a conductor because it plays chamber music.
Chamber music has been Bellasi's speciality since he set up a trio with Umberto Oliveti (on violin) and Emilio Poggioni (on viola). The three founded the original group, Trio D'Archi Di Como, in 1971.
The trio grew into a quartet with the addition of a cellist ten years later before expanding into a 14-member orchestra in 1985.
Their repertoire spans 400 years, and usually includes the works of Italian Renaissance composer Andrea Gabrieli (1510- 1585). The works of famous composers such as Handel, Bach, Mozart and Beethoven are included, but the group also features works by early 19th-century composers like F. Szabo (1902-1969).
Despite the ensemble's intimate knowledge of chamber music and the fact that most of its members have played together for five years, the ensemble took 20 days to prepare for the Jakarta performance. The intensive preparation made them a very solid team.
The younger members are recruited from the best students at the Conservatory of Milan. Many have won the annual international music competition in Stresa, a town in northwestern Italy.
The ensemble also serves as an orchestra for conductor trainees. It set up a course for orchestra conductors, the first of its kind in Italy, in 1993. Obviously, it is a far better simulator than one or two pianos, with which would-be conductors traditionally train.
Although members come and go, the ensemble always has a least 14 people. "It is expandable to 32, but no more than that," Oliveti conceded.
After all, intimacy isn't found among multitudes.