The more things change, the more they remain the same

Now, why do we get to hear the same pieces of classical music all the time? This question is always inevitable before judging at a piano competition, especially in 5 months from now that the Ananda Sukarlan Award will take place. Imagine listening to hundreds of participants, all playing those same pieces of music. Chopin Ballades and Scherzi are on the top of the list, as well as his Etudes. Beethoven's Sonatas follow. My complain is not because that they are boring, no no no. They are masterpieces. But aren't there more piano works? Hundreds more that participants can choose to play, instead of all those same, though great, stuff? .............................................................................................................................................. I borrowed the title of this entry from a phrase by the 19th century French writer Alphonse Karr, and only now that it proves to be more true than ever. That issue mentioned above is, in my opinion, one of the reasons why classical music concerts become so "unattractive". Would you watch the same movie again and again? Would you read a book again and again? I mean, throughout your whole life, like, 50 times. Yeah well, I admit I do, with some movies like WestSide Story, The Godfather or Dead Poets' Society, and Shakespeare's Romeo & Juliet or that Metamorphosis of Ovid that I went on and on in my previous entry, but I do watch new films, read new books. It's not that everytime I switch on my DVD player I watch The Godfather. Well it's different if it's an opera or a Shakespeare play, since the actors change, the settings change and there are more extramusical things there. But a Beethoven sonata? Could 2 pianists really, I mean really, give a significant difference in interpreting a Beethoven Sonata that would make it so fresh and compelling? The problem is that we've heard Schnabel's, Rubinstein's, Brendel's version of Beethoven's Sonatas. Now, could we (I include myself) give a performance that is really worth listening to, after those masters? .............................................................................................................................................. Another theme I wanna address here is about concentration span. Yeah yeah, people say that due to the social media etc., our attention span is getting shorter n shorter. You know what? I have received more than a few messages, saying that AT LAST they listened to my Rapsodia Nusantara no. 10, which is in fact the first track of Henoch Kristianto's CD of my piano works. Wanna know their reasons not to listen to it until the end before? Coz the introduction, which lasts more than 1 minute long, is too dissonant. But then they read some tweets or comments of people who said that no. 10 is, for them, my best Rapsy, and that it's based on a Balinese traditional song, Janger. "Eh?" they wondered. "But I didn't hear any Janger there". Well folks, you just gotta wait until about 1.30 minutes when the introduction ends! Instead, after about half a minute they went directly to the next track, which is my Rapsy 6. And oh, how nice it is, with its impressionistic colours and a nice melody that appears in about 2 seconds! .............................................................................................................................................. Now that made me think. Would Beethoven have done his Eroica Variations like that if he were alive today? You know, Eroica's theme didn't appear until like 2 minutes or so. The beginning of that piece is just so, so absurd and baffling. For people who listen to it for the first time today, they might not discover how great a piece it is! .............................................................................................................................................. And as a whole, some people complain about concerts being too long? You can’t sit through a 20-minute sonata? Believe it or not, sitting still and concentrating for extended periods of time are actual, important life skills. Grown up skills. If you can’t concentrate on something for 20 minutes, the problem may be with you rather than with the music. That doesn’t mean that the longer the piece of music the more it is a masterpiece, but maybe you could take the time to find out. And frankly, these composers wrote about some pretty serious things in their piece: life, death, (unrequited) love, faith, desire, war. Those things can’t always fit into a 3 minute song. Sorry. .............................................................................................................................................. Finally…if the music is too long, then it's boring? Excuse me? Boring, did you say? Listen to Shostakovich. The guy lived with a bag packed, looking over both shoulders, waiting to die a long, painful, horrible death in the frozen land of Siberia for, not wanting to call a violent, erratic sociopath (Stalin) the greatest guy who ever lived. Good ol’ Dimitri defied official orders time and time again; he was brave, and he was honest: this fear (and his love of his homeland) found its way into his music. Listen to his 5th symphony. Go, ahead, do it -– then tell me that this music is boring. .............................................................................................................................................. C'mon guys. Time's changing fast. WE are changing fast. And classical music should change with time and with us. To be better, of course. Be more creative. "Classical" doesn't mean "old", "pedantic" and "stale". There is a huge world to be discovered there, not only by the average audience, but by us too, musicians who deal with it every day.