Music and dance will dominate JIFPA

Music and dance will dominate JIFPA

By Gus Kairupan

JAKARTA (JP): JIFPA, a cultural event that shows every sign of
being here to stay. Spelled out in full, JIFPA stands for Jakarta
International Festival of the Performing Arts.

The opening of the third one was held last Sunday at Gedung
Kesenian Jakarta, and as the director of GKJ said in her
welcoming speech, this one is to last a month. A good sign, that.

The first one, held three years ago, lasted four months, which
was far too long for a festival. Even one month can be considered
a bit on the long side, although considering that the only venue
is GKJ, the duration may be all right. However, maybe some
thought could be devoted to widening the event by involving more
performing arts centers -- remember TIM has four stages besides a
number of smaller but very suitable auditoriums run by foreign
representations here.

You'd be surprised at how many and how varied the kinds of
stage productions which could be organized. As it is now, music
and dance are the only types that fill the Festival's programs.
But JIFPA, at the age of three, is still growing, and hopefully
growing to a stage where all the performing arts are well and
truly represented.

Foreign countries taking part this year are Japan, Germany,
Australia, Austria, the Netherlands, the Philippines and China
which is sending the Beijing Opera group. Now, that's something
to look forward to. As far as I know, it could well be the first
time that the Beijing Opera is staged here.

Simple event

The Festival opened with a simple event featuring the Jakarta
Symphony Orchestra, followed by a gathering of the invited guests
for "refreshments", as Ms. Feisol said. Of course, by now
everybody knows that refreshments a la Indonesia constitute a
full meal. When it comes to eating, we don't believe in half-
measures.

The main feature of the evening, however, was the performance
of the Jakarta Symphony Orchestra directed by Judianto
Hinupurwadi. Participating as guest artist in the concert was
Santiago G. Yangco, a flutist who is still in the midst of a
distinguished career which includes performances in, among
others, London, New York, Guam, as well as teaching at the
College of Music of the University of the Philippines (that's
where he hails from) and Sta. Isabel College of Music. He's also
conductor of the Cabiao Symphony Band of Nueva Ecija. How he
finds time to practice dentistry (his other profession) is
anybody's guess.

Question: why mess about with the insides of people's mouths
and make them scream when you're so eminently gifted to entertain
them with the best there is in music? For Santiago Yangco is an
extremely fine musician who gave depth to Mozart's flute
concerto, a work often dismissed as superficial.

Yangco wasn't the only non-Indonesian taking part in the
concert. There was bassoonist Noel A. Singcuenco, also from the
Philippines, Soun Youn Yoon from South Korea who, I was told,
occupied first chair oboe section in the Seoul Symphony Orches
tra. Also Eric Awuy (brother of harpist Heidi Awuy), Indonesian,
but still attached to a symphony orchestra in Montreal, Canada.
It's seasoned performers like these that budding orchestras like
JSO are in crying need of. In Indonesia's immediate neighborhood
(i.e. the ASEAN context) the Philippines and Singapore are proba
bly the only countries that are ahead of Indonesia when it comes
to symphonic music activities. We could learn a thing or two from
them, and this doesn't apply only to players in orchestras but
also to conductors.

Creditable

The program included three works: the overture to William Tell
by Rossini, Dvorak's New World Symphony and Mozart's Concerto for
Flute in D-Major. Now, orchestras being what they are in Jakarta
(developing stage, that is) one cannot expect too much from them
in terms of musicianship. JSO at least did not overreach itself
with this program (they have played excerpts of Dvorak's work
before), and thus gave a creditable performance. First and second
violins could have done with a more unified tone which is a bit
odd considering that violins are usually quite strong here. A
revelation however, was the cello section, which after a few
wobbly seconds at the beginning of the William Tell overture,
found its feet and its strength.

As for the symphony, director Yudianto should have created a
deeper, richer tone for the entire work and more contrasting
dynamics. The work belongs very much to the romantic period and
must be treated as such. As it was, in the orchestra's timbre and
tone, there wasn't much difference between Dvorak's symphony and
Mozart's concerto which belongs to the classical period.

I am also inclined to think that it is the presence of the
more experienced musicians that contributed a lot to the woodwind
and brass sections' impressive performance, especially the oboe's
very extensive solo part in the second movement of Dvorak's
symphony. It's a pity that they're here for only a limited time,
but then, these days you can't turn your ears in any direction
without hearing such things like "globalization" and "transfer of
technology". Well, something like that applies to music just as
much as it does to making croissants or pumping oil out of the
earth's belly.

JSO, to its credit, has not overreached itself, but the time
may come that we would like to hear works by, say, Hindemith or
Stravinsky or Messiaen.