Foreword to Alicia's 4th Piano Book

Yup, it's now being printed! We plan to release it in about 2 weeks time. This is what I wrote for the introduction. .............................................................................................................................................. Although practically all of the pieces in this book are not for my daughter anymore (to play on the piano), she still plays an important role as my muse and inspirer. You see, Alicia is now 15, and we can talk about things of the adults : friendships, relationships ... and romance. Yup, as a 15-year-young lady, she already has her shares of the beauty and pain of love and passion. It's only nowadays, during our loooong and intense conversations through the night, that I find the real beauty and meaning of life. That beauty that can't be exchanged with all the success, money or anything else in this world. 5 years ago I wouldn't believe that I could learn so much about life from my very young Alicia. And yet she belongs to a generation that tweets, being immersed in their smartphones during a big chunk of the day and have short attention spans. Even the pop music written today are much simpler then those written during my generation to adapt to the limited musical brain of today's generation. No more poignant recitatives of Whitney Houston or Queen. No more breathtaking harmonies of The Beatles. And of course, goodbye to those incredible riffs n rhythmic inventions of Michael Jackson. Alicia, like her friends, listens to the pop music of today. And yet, she has so many inside her to inspire and teach me. .............................................................................................................................................. Therefore, pieces like "Call me but love .." (this is the longest, and perhaps most complex piece in this book) was born from our conversations, analyzing the balcony scene of Shakespeare's Romeo & Juliet, when we delved into the theme of passion and the whole divine madness. The title came from the lines of Romeo, responding to Juliet's : .............................................................................................................................................. O Romeo, Romeo! Wherefore art thou, Romeo? Deny thy father and refuse thy name; Or, if thou wilt not, be but sworn my love, And I'll no longer be a Capulet. .............................................................................................................................................. And Romeo answered : Call me but love, and I'll be new baptis'd; Henceforth I never will be Romeo. .............................................................................................................................................. Many of the pieces here are also written for friends either for a special event in their lives, or just because I wanna write them, because I believe that everyone that came to my life is there for a reason. And my music is the manifesto of that reason, since it is thanks to those dedicatees that I could give birth to the music. Therefore, Alicia's 4th piano book is more like a collection of my short piano pieces, a musical diary of my day-to-day life, sometimes with no educational purposes in mind. Unlike my longer pieces, the pieces in this book are more intuitively written, therefore I don't really think about their technical difficulties. It is thanks to pianist Henoch Kristianto who has recorded most of my piano music (including many of them in this book, and all of my heavily virtuosic Rapsodia Nusantara, yes, all of them!) and his team at the Clavier Music Academy that these pieces are now graded according to their pianistic levels of difficulty. He even found pedagogic values and educative purposes in those pieces! I will leave you now with his words while he worked on them. And thank you again to all of you who have made the music in the previous Alicia's Piano Books part of your musical life. Hope you all still enjoy studying these modest pieces, either for educational or teaching purposes, repertoire for your concerts, or just for plain fun playing them at home during rainy days :) . .............................................................................................................................................. Ananda Sukarlan, April 2014. .............................................................................................................................................. Introduction by Henoch Kristianto .............................................................................................................................................. Those who were fortunate enough to hear Ananda Sukarlan's piano music in live performance would agree that his music is very close to the ears of his Indonesian listeners or those who are Indonesian at heart. It cannot be disputed that his compositions comprise the greatest variety, from the deepest pathos to most sparkling humor. As a prolific performing pianist and composer of variations, rhapsodies and other small-scale works for piano, Sukarlan claimed that he always felt more at home when composing his vocal works. Perhaps due to this personal preference, you may find many of the pieces in this Alicia book very "cantabile" in the sense that they are very much singable. This feature of course is an excellent tool for the musical development of any young pianists. Intended primarily for the cultivated amateur, these works are abound in attractive melodic ideas and brilliant instrumental writing. Indeed, their study will lead to higher realms of imagination and it shall prepare for all that can be found in piano literature. ~Henoch Kristianto