Is classical music dead .... for the n-th time?

I dunno how many times I wrote here, for my younger pianists colleagues, that as a performer/artist we gotta be more daring, adventurous and (if it's still possible, hell yeah, why not) original. Of course I looooove all those Beethoven Sonatas etc. etc, but who are coming to listen to those Sonatas performed again and again? Me, yeah, and very few other freaks, but think of the hassle of going out of the house to go to the concert hall. The motivation should be strong enough. Especially in Jakarta, the most jammed city in the world! If not, I just take some CDs of mine and listen to it at home. And c'mon, let's admit it: between the performer and the repertoire, you are coming to a concert for the performer, right? So, when (s)he is a young and beautiful person, do you really care what (s)he is performing? Of course there are other values apart from having a pretty face (if this were the only criteria, I would have given up my career loooong ago), which includes charisma or stage presence, personal friendship or relationship with the artist... and an adventurous programming. There was a recent statement from Martin Engstroem, that highly powerful guy of the record company Deutsche Grammophone (well, no classical record company is that powerful anymore nowadays). I quote his words : "The image is central to the cultural life. When I came to Deutsche Grammophon, my office was A & R, or manager of Artists and Repertoire. But the repertory did not matter to anyone. The artist was what counted; and my job ended up being a big A and a small r because no one buys the symphonies of Beethoven. A CD lasts long, making it unnecessary to replace it. Today people follows the artist. The public wants the last CD of Cecilia Bartoli or Lang Lang, and it matters little what is recorded. The repertoire is secondary." .............................................................................................................................................. And this is not just happening with piano recitals. What, do you think, is the reason of the closing of many symphony orchestras, the continuing problems of the most expensive opera house today which is the Queen Sofia Palau de les Arts in Valencia, and the latest the Metropolitan Opera of New York? Coz they don't get enough public. No, no, I rectify it. They couldn't get enough NEW public. And members of the old audience are leaving. It's not that the public is funding them. It's the sponsors: nobody wants to sponsor events which do not attract public. So, for us who don't have exactly the pretty faces needed, there are other elements which matter when we are performing. But the most important thing is that performers should have interaction with the public with his music. Shortly speaking, he should have sex with the public, not just masturbate alone on stage, performing the works that he likes and imagining that the public would like it too. Programming is not an accumulation of good music on stage. It is a process. Even sex has a process, you can't start with an orgasm. .............................................................................................................................................. But I think we are going in the right track in Indonesia. At least, the classical audience is GROWING, not DIMINISHING, and most importantly, young people go to our concerts. I personally try to think of fresh --which often means not mainstream-- programming, and I do need fresh ideas constantly. And that, my friend, I can only get from the public. So please tweet me, give me ideas of what you wanna hear in concerts! .............................................................................................................................................. That's why I was so delighted when The Juan March Foundation (this is a prominent patron of the arts in Spain, with whom I've been working since my move to Spain in 1998) is programming a series of concerts with the theme of music based on the motif B.A.C.H . Juan March Foundation is also famous for their fresh approach to programming, and inviting prominent artists who care about this aspect ; their latest guests were the American composer John Adams and the conductor-pianist Daniel Barenboim. For the next season they asked me to perform with this program of BACH motif (they have a series of the same theme, there is a concert with string quartet, and other instruments) and also asked me and several other Spanish composers to write new works on this motif. For my concert, I chose my favorite composer, Santiago Lanchares to do a new work which I will premiere together with mine. Of course, the most celebrated piece of music with this motif is Liszt's Fantasy and Fugue on B.A.C.H. But then, browsing on the internet and guided by Miguel Angel Marin, the artistic director of the Foundation, I found tons of other pieces, so I checked some of them . One particular piece which took my breath away was by Rimsky Korsakov: Six Variations on the theme BACH, op. 10 (this opus number doesn't mean it's an early work. Well, he was 34 years when he wrote it, but remember that he was not a "child prodigy" as we normally say it. And he combined his compositional career and teaching with a career in the Russian military). It's just so clever how he uses the BACH theme as the bass line only most of the time. In fact, one don't hear that theme too often. And his harmonies are, well, inventive, striking, you name it. And apparently, after it was premiered and performed several times after it was written in 1878, it was sort of forgotten. There is no record whatsoever that it's been performed outside Europe, so most probably when I perform this in Indonesia it will be the first Asian performance ... after 136 years! I also looove the piano writing : it's clear, transparent and not one note too many. .............................................................................................................................................. I admit, I learned a lot from Rimsky's work in writing my own music music, Fantasy & Fugue on B.A.C.H. My piece turns out to be so different from Rimsky's, but I understood the harmonic wealth and possibilities from that motif. And also I realized how it could be so diatonic, chromatic and atonal at the same time. My piece lasts for about 6 minutes or a bit more, it is quite virtuosic and perhaps it's the most "atonal" sounding of my works till now (apart from some short pieces in Alicia's Piano Books), but I hope its virtuosity would compensate its atonal dissonance, especially the fugue which lasts for just a bit more than 2 minutes. .............................................................................................................................................. The thing is, a piece of music becomes "legendary" because of some mysterious luck (apart from its high quality, of course, but as I said, there are so, so many forgotten masterpieces). Some composers like Taneyev, Paderewski (who used to be the Prime Minister of Poland! And perhaps he was the only example in history of both a good politician AND artist), Respighi and I can name hundreds more of "unplayed" composers which include Rimsky Korsakov just had, and still is having bad luck. So, pianists, start searching! The internet is now your best friend! .............................................................................................................................................. Since the new Titan Center concert hall in Bintaro (South Jakarta) invited me to perform there and taste their nice acoustics, I decided to perform both Rimsky Korsakov's Variations and my own Fantasy and Fugue there. My work will be a first performance, since it hasn't been performed before, although the official World Premiere will be at the Juan March Foundation in Madrid later this year. The concert at Titan Center will take place on September 20th at 7 p.m. There will be some Rapsodia Nusantara pieces too, of course, and my now popular Variations on I. Marzuki's "Rayuan Pulau Kelapa" which is a present "with love" from Rina Zoet to her husband, Daan :)

Robin Williams did NOT die of suicide, and art is sh*t

This entry is one that I wish I wouldn't have needed to write, but I feel that I have the obligation to write it, for many reasons. It's been 1 week since the death of my idol, hero and life-changer, the actor-comedian Robin Williams. He committed suicide, and many have tweeted (especially the religious ones) that he had a choice to end his life, unlike those who died of accidents or illness. The word “suicide” gives many people the impression that “it was his own decision,” or “he chose to die, whereas most people with cancer fight to live.” And, because Depression is still such a misunderstood condition, you can hardly blame people for not really understanding. Just a quick search on Twitter will show how many people have little sympathy for those who commit suicide. .............................................................................................................................................. You know I suffer from Asperger Syndrome. It comes with many "side effects" : feeling lonely in the crowds, strange reactions & feelings to the situation around us, need of isolation, inability to communicate or socialize ... and depression. So, I identify very well what Mr. Williams went through, although his was 10 or even 100 times worse than mine (at the moment anyway). Depression is not a choice of lifestyle. You can’t just “cheer up” with depression, just as you can’t choose not to have cancer. When someone commits suicide as a result of Depression, they die from Depression – an illness that kills millions each year. It is hard to know exactly how many people actually die from Depression each year because the figures and statistics only seem to show how many people die from “suicide” each year (and you don’t necessarily have to suffer Depression to commit suicide, it’s usually just implied). I feel the need to clarify the stigmas that continue to surround it. Perhaps Depression might lose some its “it was his own fault” stigma, if we start focusing on the illness, rather than the symptom. Robin Williams didn’t die from suicide. He died from Depression. It wasn’t his choice to suffer that. And it has to do with "art". Eh? Well, let me tell you about it. .............................................................................................................................................. I consider "art" as our vomit, or our sh*t. Yes, it can be THAT disgusting. We create art because it's something inside us that needs to go out of our body, or our system, otherwise it becomes poison for us. That's why sometimes we can't stand listening to our own music, or see our own paintings. The most beautiful works of art so often were born out of pain and sufferings. And that's why, if you wonder why artists sometimes can be such complex people, we have the necessity to "create art", unlike some "healthy people" who can be happy in life without doing it. It's a way to create balance in us. And I wish more people would understand this: creating art doesn't necessarily means that the artist has so much time and "feel like" doing something, Producing art is not a pastime like filling up crossword puzzles. And sometimes, getting that "art" out of our system is still not enough. I do believe that when we who are gifted with creativity, something is also taken away from us. It is the nature's (or God's, if I may guess) way to create balance. And that's why I think you should be happy if you don't have the necessity to create. Coz you're balanced already. .............................................................................................................................................. Anyway, back to Robin Williams, I am deeply grateful for his role as Professor John Keating in the film "Dead Poets' Society". So sad that RW died the way Neil died in this film. Prof. Keating reminded me the meaning of life: coz we're creatures of human race and we have love. Dead Poets Society has changed my life. I identify so closely with Todd Anderson (played by Ethan Hawke) in that film. He transformed me from that kind of boy I was: afraid, confused and insecure to face the world, but Keating has reminded us, through Walt Whitman's poem, that "we can contribute a verse". And oh my, what a verse that Mr. Williams has contributed to us! Requiescat in Pace, Robin Williams. You have changed the life of at least a boy who was afraid to face his own choice for his life.

In memoriam Peter Sculthorpe, the greatest Australian composer, a friend, an idol

Before anything else, I'd like to say one thing about Peter Sculthorpe: composer, friend, idol, who died last week (August 8). Since he corresponded by email (although he arrived late with this technology), I missed his handwriting. I think he can also be remembered as the composer who had the most beautiful handwriting in the world. I started corresponding with him in the 1990s (still on "written paper"), and his manuscript of Little Passacaglia, the piano piece he wrote and dedicated to me, was still in his handwriting. I have it at home in Spain, if I were there now I would have scanned it and paste it here. I have wanted to write this obituary as an admirer and a friend, but the premiere of my own Chamber Symphony "In memoriam Ainun Habibie" took much of my time (his date of death coincided with the date of my arrival in Indonesia; I received an email from his manager on that date but then I went directly to the rehearsals of mine from the airport), so sorry for this late post. .............................................................................................................................................. Peter Sculthorpe is not "just another composer" for me. He, together with Toru Takemitsu who I also got to know and worked together, was an artist who defined "the classical music of his country", in his case, Australia. Both him and Takemitsu opened up my eyes (I should say ears) that we MUST establish the identity of our nation's classical music by digging deep into our native music ; that's also part of the job of a composer. And for an Australian, it's not an easy job. What is Australian native music? It took him a while to get it into his system. His music has been influenced by all the neighbouring countries' music. He wove Balinese elements into Sun Music III (1967) and Tabuh Tabuhan (1968) and leant towards Japan in Night Pieces (1971) and Koto Music (1973). Such pieces reflected the composer’s prescience that, despite two centuries of British sway, Australia was, geographically if not yet culturally, part of Asia. I then recorded all his piano music up to the year 2006 (he had written a bit more since then) and my CD has been released around that year, as well as Takemitsu's which will be released later this year (2014). In Takemitsu's case, it was really his complete piano music, since I recorded it a few years ago, and he died in 1996. .............................................................................................................................................. Peter Sculthorpe, perhaps Australia's greatest, or at least the most important composer in history, was born in the Invermay, a suburb of Launceston, Tasmania, on April 29, 1929. His mother was from Yorkshire and schooled her young son in a love of English poetry. Guided by the music of Delius, the aspiring composer began to write pastorales and to take long walks through the bush. Simultaneously, however, he grew fascinated by the music performed each week at a nearby Chinese market garden. Anyway, I am not going to write his biography here since you can just google it. But I wanna quote what's perhaps his most powerful sayings. .............................................................................................................................................. “I set out to present my own view, my own vision, of Australia. We don’t think of, say, an Australian painting of Australia by Sidney Nolan as an Australian painting. It’s his view of it and it’s the same with me", he said once in an interview. I met him only twice, and those meetings were in London and in Amsterdam, never in Australia, which is quite weird. Everytime I went to Sydney, he was always abroad. It was during those meetings that I became more and more convinced, that my own Rapsodia Nusantara series for piano are pieces that I was born to write. Some of them are commissioned or sponsored, some I wrote purely out of the blue, some enjoyed tremendous recognition, some were only played by a handful of pianists, but those pieces just gotta be written, I know it. .............................................................................................................................................. Thank you Peter. Not only your music lives forever, but your spirit remains within me. O Captain, my Captain ! Your fearful trip is done, The ship has weather'd every rack, the prize you sought is won (apologies for modifying Walt Whitman's poem). Now you can Rest in Peace.

A new volume of Rapsodia Nusantara, but ....

I haven't had even a 15-minute break since I arrived in Indonesia! Immediately after I landed, we rehearsed my Chamber Symphony no.1 "In memoriam Ainun Habibie", commissioned by the Habibie-Ainun Foundation (see my entries of last month and before). It's been premiered with myself conducting my 10 wonderful musician friends at the residence of Mr. Habibie, Indonesia's third president and we also have recorded it using Mr. President's impressively exquisite library as the studio. Yeah, we were interrupted for about 40 minutes by the sound of the torrential rain, but apart from that, the recording went so well. So, we'll see what we'll do with that recording! Now that the dedicatee of my Rapsodia Nusantara no. 11, the marvellous (and stunningly beautiful too) Argentinian pianist, Natalia Gonzalez Figueroa is going to give its world premiere in Buenos Aires on the 23rd this month, the score of that work has to be published for that date. The issue is, that my manager usually publish my Rapsies in a volume of 5 numbers, therefore there exist already 2 volumes now: no. 1-5 and 6-10. For the moment I've finished composing up till Rapsy 12+1, but I haven't written Rapsy 14 and 15, mostly due to the fact that nobody / institutions have commissioned them. And no time to do it either ... I gotta finish this opera soon! Well, two-thirds of Rapsy 14 is taken from my Chamber Symphony (some parts are adapted into piano plus the original cadenzas for the piano in the 3rd movement), and I could have done it in a few days and without any sponsors (just like my early Rapsodias!), but that still leaves me with Rapsy 15. .............................................................................................................................................. So, Chendra my manager proposed me a solution (he almost always has a solution for everything practical ... not musical ones, but mostly for administrative and executive purposes). He proposed to publish my Variations on Ismail Marzuki's "Rayuan Pulau Kelapa" and on "Silent Night" together with Rapsy 11 in one book. In this case, they are similar : both written based on existing songs / materials, just like Rapsodia Nusantara. I thought it's a fantastic idea, so I add similar pieces, yet to be premiered : Fantasy & Fugue on B.A.C.H (I will blog about this soon, near the premiere) and Fantasy & Passacaglia on "Adeste Fideles". And voila, the book will consist of 5 pieces, just like the volumes I and II of Rapsodia Nusantara! .............................................................................................................................................. The "Adeste Fideles" Fantasy was written during the days when I was "dry" during my first few weeks of writing my opera, CLARA. Clara had a difficult start, since I tried to change the structure of the story into a flashback. Even with the structure carefully planned, I was still feeling insecure even until I already wrote down the first few (even many!) notes. The theme doesn't help either. It's so painful, not the usual "mental" pain as in unrequited love, but a physical one, since it's about rape and death. Everything is so violent, and I have so much fear for violence. I tried to make this opera as a therapeutic method for me to deal with things that I fear so much in me. So, I wrote a variation of the passacaglia every time I dried up or was incapable of writing .... which proved that those days were a lot! "Adeste Fideles" turned into one of the longest pieces for piano that I've written (it lasts around 12-13 minutes). .............................................................................................................................................. The original "Silent Night" is perhaps the only musical work that is remembered from the German composer Franz Xaver Gruber (1787-1863). On the Christmas Eve of 1818, Joseph Mohr, an assistant pastor at St Nicholas, showed Gruber a six-stanza poem he had written in 1816. They were both working in that church at Obendorf, near Salzburg. He asked Gruber to set the poem to music. The church organ had broken down so Gruber produced a melody with guitar arrangement for the poem. The two men sang "Stille Nacht" for the first time at Christmas Mass in St Nicholas Church while Mohr played guitar and the choir repeated the last two lines of each verse. In later years, Gruber composed additional arrangements of the carol for organ and for organ with orchestra, as well as scores of other carols and masses, many of which are still in print and sung today in Austrian churches. .............................................................................................................................................. There are no royalties involved in these two songs, and I have liked the tunes since I remembered, so writing paraphrases on those tunes proved to be really fun. I just hope that they are fun to play as well!

Let's keep the drama ONstage, not OFFstage

Not really much time to rest after finishing my Chamber Symphony. I gotta go back to my opera CLARA that was abandoned due to the writing of Chamber Symphony. Oh, I haven't blogged about that? Well, now I do. It is based on a short but powerful story by Seno Gumira Ajidarma (better known as SGA), the same writer who inspired me to write my previous operas Satria and The Mother, whose son was kidnapped. This opera is commissioned by Pundi Perempuan, an institution to raise and manage funds to support the Women's Crisis Center (WCC) that deals with the issue of violence against women in various regions in Indonesia. So, if you buy a ticket to see this opera, the money goes to the commissioner's foundation, and it will be used for helping the female victims of rape. They commissioned me an opera that deals with that issue and gave me freedom to choose the libretto and soloists, and since Clara is a celebrated Indonesian masterpiece of Indonesian literature that addresses the sexual violence of that period which I have long wished to set to music I immediately accepted their invitation. Apart from that, SGA has always been one of my favorite writer. .............................................................................................................................................. “Clara, or the lady who was raped" was written by SGA during the economic, political and social crisis of May 1998, and published in the wake of Suharto’s resignation. “Clara” is a multi-layered narrative that recounts the perspective of an ethnic Chinese woman who was raped during the anti-Chinese riots and mass rapes that occurred in Jakarta at that period. These riots and sexual violence were orchestrated and facilitated by networks in the security forces that were seeking to destabilise Indonesian society. Throughout the New Order (that's how the Suharto regime is called), Indonesians of Chinese background were frequently scapegoated and marginalised in the grand but fake narrative of what and who made up the Indonesian nation. “Clara” makes a significant contribution to recent Indonesian short fiction, because of the way it shows how the narratives of the victims were both denied and silenced by state law apparatus. The ambivalent attitude of the policeman who listens to Clara’s account of her rape, captures both the hatred and jealousy for the Chinese as well as attraction towards them. I put the long aria of the policeman's feelings in the beginning, with music changing constantly from romantically lyrical to rhythmical (again, Michael Jackson proves to be still very much alive in me). .............................................................................................................................................. Apart from the reason above, the strong reason why I wanted to set CLARA to music is the rape issue which I am pasting here from a recent survey. ................................................................................................................................................. A third of the responders in a survey last year in Great Britain believe that a woman acting "flirty" can be blamed for being raped. And this study are based on a survey into two sexes with equal numbers of each. More than a quarter also believe a woman is responsible to be raped if she was wearing sexy clothes or drunk. Even more women (5%) than men (3%) thought the woman was "totally responsible" for being raped if she was drunk. ................................................................................................................................................ As we know, rape is a criminal act in which the victim often became defendants. An action that is easy to prosecute, but most difficult to prove. What can I say? What can I do? Frankly, nothing. If the whole history of human civilization has still no solution to it, what can I do? The only thing is to bring awareness that rape is not an act which lasts for a few minutes. For the rapist, of course. But for the victim, it is for life. It cannot be cured simply with "Oh it will take a long time to forget but you will" or "Just focus on peace and love from now on, dear, and you'll be able to forgive the rapist". Because you won't. Even if one forgives, she can't forget. And one can write hundreds of operas, make hundreds of films, write hundreds of books, and I doubt that things will change. What I hope from my opera is just that it could be seen by enough people so that it could raise enough money to help the victims of rape, and to keep reminding us what happened during the 1998 uprising. The person behind all that kidnapping and killings, Prabowo Subianto is a very wealthy person who was very close to becoming our president, for goodness sake. He was an abominable megalomaniac, not so much unlike North Korea's Kim Jong Un who wanted to eliminate democracy in Indonesia and declared on BBC that two thirds of Indonesian people are stupid just because we didn't vote for him. This year's election was the first elections that I participated in my whole life, not only because I admire Jokowi (who at last won the elections), but also because I just couldn't stand the idea that my country would be ruled by a ruthless dictator like him. The Prabowo issue is more important for me than the winning of Jokowi ; an admiration to a politician is not enough for me to get my ass up and vote, but if my country would be attacked (even by our own countryman) or is in danger of collapse, I would give any contribution I could to avoid it, no matter how small or insignificant my contribution is. .............................................................................................................................................. CLARA will be premiered this December in Jakarta by winners of the national vocal competition "Tembang Puitik Ananda Sukarlan" 2013: Isyana Sarasvati (Clara), Widhawan Aryo Pradhita (Policeman) and Nikodemus Lukas Hariono (father of Clara), plus a bunch of male supporting actors who act as the rapists of Clara.