A literary festival which is not only literary

It's been quite an inspiring half a week! The 2nd ASEAN Literary Festival was held in Jakarta, visited by literary figures from 20 countries. I am honoured to be invited to give a half-an-hour concert for the opening, which also include some poetry reading by Indonesian prominent poet Khrisna Pabichara and a speech by Dr. Ma Thida, a writer and human rights activist from Myanmar who spent many years in prison for "endangering public peace, having contact with illegal organisations, and distributing unlawful literature." .............................................................................................................................................. The program director of this highly inspiring festival is Okky Madasari, the awardwinning writer famous for her novels about (the lack of) human rights. She designed this year's festival as a tribute to Sitor Situmorang, Indonesia's great poet who died less than 100 days ago. Since Sitor is one of my favorite poets, I have written a few songs based on his poems, but then I wrote a new one, (and a looong one by the way!) based on his masterpiece, La Ronde. It is one of the most erotic poems ever done in Indonesia literature, and written so subtly and exquisitely. It was in fact written for tenor and harp, since I felt that the harp represents more the sound that was triggered by the poem in my head, but unfortunately the young harpist partner of the tenor (Nikodemus Lukas, who sang so beautifully) had some examinations at those dates. Yeah, Jessica Sudarta the harpist is only 16, and her school makes her too busy. So I adapted the harp part for the piano and played it myself accompanying Niko. But they will record that work this year, so I am very much looking forward to it. Niko and I then perform my older songs based on poems by Sitor, and apparently many members of the audience made video recordings of them (yeah, it's so easy to do it nowadays!) and even uploaded them on youtube. This is one of them : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hZBQs9YVaa0 .............................................................................................................................................. What made me happy about this is that at last the relationship between (classical) music and literature in Indonesia is now re-established. Since the death of composers such as Mochtar Embut and F.X. Sutopo (who wrote songs based on poems by W.S. Rendra etc) in the 1970s and 80s, these two artistic fields didn't meet anymore. I continued the tradition without even being aware that it was cut, since I live in Europe, where composers keep on composing based on existing poems or other literary forms since the 19th century (as you know, Franz Schubert and Robert Schumann were the pioneers in doing this). You might ask, what do we, composers, contribute to those poems that are already so highly expressive? Well, music enhances words with emotional energy that speech alone cannot convey. But obviously, there is more to it than this! We in Indonesia have a beautiful term for this art: Tembang Puitik (Poetic Song, which differentiates it from other songs whose texts are written by the songwriter himself). Therefore it strives to be the perfect combination of music and literature, based on four elements: poet, composer, singer and accompanist. The composer uses the full resources of the art form to embellish the poet's text, sometimes even realizing potential interpretations that were not explicit in the poet's words. In a well-realized Poetic Song, the composer creates a duet between the accompanist and the vocalist, so an accompanist's job is not merely "accompanying" with nice rhythms and chords. That is, the poetic song paints for us a picture of what the poet might have envisioned. The performance of an poetic song literally breathes life into this picture through a complementary, coordinated partnership among the four significant elements. .............................................................................................................................................. Now I have written around 120 songs based on Indonesian poems, and another 60 or 70 on poems of Whitman, Browning and other foreign writers. In fact, I started to write those Indonesian songs in 2006 after having written many songs in English and Spanish, and now I feel really comfortable in composing on poems of my mother tongue. And I met new literary friends in this great festival, and I discovered the works by young writers such as Adimas Immanuel and Bernard Batubara so I am looking forward to write something based on their works. I also met long-time-no-see great poets Hasan Aspahani and Joko Pinurbo. .............................................................................................................................................. My latest poetic songs are included in my CD "An Essay on Love", sung by Widhawan Aryo Praditha, Theodora Amabel Beatrice and Niko as well. If you are interested in it, please tweet me at @anandasukarlan .

The 3rd volume of Rapsodia Nusantara

I have been thinking a lot lately about virtuosity. What is it exactly? If you google or search that term in the dictionary, mostly they will give the definition : great technical skill (as in the practice of a fine art). But what is "skill" in piano playing? Is it fast fingers, powerful thunderous chords and accurate landing jumps? .............................................................................................................................................. The history of composing for the piano has gone so far since the virtuosity of Scarlatti in the beginning of 18th century. Octaves run around in the romantic composers' scores, and the piano can produce the sound of the storm through the accumulation of chords. The 20th century reinvented the piano into its origin: a percussive (and even percussion) instrument. It seems like each period had invented its own technique. When the new techniques were established and developed, they seemed to replace the previous ones, but only for the ignorant observer: They augmented each other. Today we need to acquire all techniques in order to be able to play repertoire ranging from Bach to Britten, Scarlatti to Shostakovich (and therefore, ... ehm ... Sukarlan!). Apart from finger techniques, it now extends to polyrhythms, a refined ability to discriminate varied layers of sonorities, sophisticated pedal combinations, different ways to produce the sound: from the most tender that gives the illusion of a "hammerless piano" to the most percussive and superior control of complex metric and rhythmic passages. In other words, virtuosity now exists in the ability of the brain to perform the intricacies of the music, which doesn't always mean fast, powerful and loud music. .............................................................................................................................................. One should also be familiar with complex chord progressions, and playing different elements with the left hand only, such as in my Rapsodia Nusantara no. 15. Therefore, one can see that at this stage of my composition of the Rapsodias, the perception of virtuosity has changed. Polyphonic writing abound, and thick textures that ruled many of my previous Rapsodias have given way to more transparent ones. "Simplicity is the final achievement. After one has played a vast quantity of notes and more notes, it is simplicity that emerges as the crowning reward of art" - Frederic Chopin