Nuansa Klasika group improves its performance

Nuansa Klasika group improves its performance

By Gus Kairupan

JAKARTA (JP): Viola, clarinet, oboe and piano is a combination
that has never occurred to any composer before the year 1996.
That year saw the birth of the group called Nuansa Klasika
(Classical Nuances) in Jakarta, the members of which are
Americans Sharon Eng (viola) and Karen Ellis-Chong (clarinet),
South Korean Soun Youn-Yoon (oboe) and Indonesian pianist Ary
Sutedja.

Nuansa Klasika performed last Friday for the second time to a
capacity audience at Gedung Kesenian Jakarta and presented a
program that included the second composition written specifically
for the aforementioned combination of instruments. Kudos for the
first go to Trisutji Kamal, who wrote last year Rondo Rhapsody
for the group's debut.

The work Nuansa Klasika played last Friday was a composition
by Korean composer Chun Hee Choi, a one-movement Quartet for
Oboe, Clarinet, Viola and Piano. These, then, are the only two
compositions in existence for such a combination, which, come to
think of it, was born in Jakarta.

However, the quartet does not -- and indeed cannot --
concentrate on works written for the four instruments in which
its members specialize. Of the four pieces performed that evening
three were trios, i.e. two originals: Arthur Foote's Sarabande
and Rigaudon for Oboe, Viola and Piano and Carl Reinecke's Trio
in A Major for Clarinet, Viola and Piano.

The remaining work was an arrangement for oboe, clarinet and
piano of Bach's Concerto for Oboe and Violin in C Minor. Now,
this is a composition by Johann Sebastian Bach played on
instruments he had never heard before, i.e. piano and clarinet --
at least not the types in use today. He may have heard prototypes
of them because they were invented around the first and second
decade of the 1700s. Bach died in 1750. In fact, he is known to
have heard the piano but didn't think much of it.

Arranging works for instruments other than the ones they were
originally intended for is as old as the art of music itself.
Bach did a lot of "borrowing" from other composers besides using
themes from his own works for other ones he was writing. There is
a version for two pianos (or harpsichords, rather) for the above
concerto. Beethoven rearranged his only violin concerto for
piano. Liszt used Schubert's Lieder for a number of his pianistic
fireworks and, of course, there are the countless "variations on
a theme by so-and-so" indulged in by Chopin, Mozart, Brahms and
so on.

Arranging could pose some knotty problems. In the case of the
concerto for oboe and violin, as arranged for oboe and clarinet,
it is the range of that instrument which took on the part of the
violin.

There were instances when the clarinet had to go down one
octave because in the original setting, the part would be beyond
its range. This is not an isolated case. There are many examples
where instruments involved in a rearranged piece had to resort to
such devices. Nuansa Klasika's members did a good job on
rearranging the work and performed it admirably.

In fact, admirable is the operative word to describe the
concert. There is a lot more cohesion between the four compared
to their first concert last year when there seemed to be more
concern on the part of each of them with their own role. This
time around they were more attuned to each other, a better
awareness not only of the trees but also of the forest.

This sort of thing doesn't come automatically. One have to
work at it constantly, steadily, until one is truly in the
other's head when it comes to making music, especially chamber
music, which is more difficult by far compared to solo or
orchestra work. One aspect that may need to be smoothed out
concerns the role of the viola in relation to the other three
instruments, which are much stronger.

What the group may want to consider in particular is the
dynamics of sound between piano, oboe and clarinet on one hand
and the viola on the other. I had a chance to be present at one
of their rehearsals and found the sound more balanced but at the
concert, the viola was quite often overpowered by (in the
Reinecke) the piano and clarinet.

I am sure that the group will overcome this aspect, though it
may perhaps be a bit difficult since they have nothing to measure
themselves against, except for the composition written for them
by Trisutji Kamal and the quartet by Chun Hee Choi, which had its
world debut last Friday.

Traditional Korean musical idioms immediately came to the fore
in Choi's composition because all instruments opened with a
series of trills in combinations reminiscent of the pentatonic
scale in use in that country.

Highly atmospheric, the opening suggested that oft-quoted
saying of Korea being the Land of the Morning Calm. But calmness
soon made way for restlessness, even stormy passages, during
strains emerged that referred to the well-known folk song
Arirang, which appeared in full in all its haunting beauty by all
instruments, led by the oboe.

The first and immediate thing the listener hears is the
oriental characteristics of the piece. But there is a bit more of
the west in it than the use of instruments. The quartet's entire
structure is certainly based on the fast-slow-fast principle that
reached maturity during the classical period in western. Which
only goes to show that at least where music is concerned Rudyard
Kipling can go suck a lemon.