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.