Foreword to Alicia's 6th Piano Book

Writing easy music is not easy. Well, we composers know that, so there are 2 types of us: the ones who avoid writing music which is easy to play, and the others who then delve into it, do the pedagogical researches and start trying to write it. I used to belong in the first club, but since I had my daughter Alicia studying piano, I joined the second club. But there is something more difficult than writing easy music, and that is writing easy AND GOOD music to be performed. Now, who could have imagined that I would keep on publishing Alicia's Piano Books when she is already a mathematics student at the University and not touching the piano at all? With this fact, Alicia's Piano Books are now simply a collection of any kind of short pieces. There are some new themes in this book that weren't in the other books. First is the piano imitating other instruments, or rather, exploring the character of other instruments. Therefore we have The Happy Bassoonist, The Nostalgic English-Hornist and The Mellow, stuck-in-the-past French Hornist which is also the 7th Love Song. This will serve two purposes: for young pianists to understand and to imagine the particular sound of the instrument, and as sketches for myself if I gotta write for the corresponding instrument in the future. A propos of Love Songs, I also decided to simply put numbers in them. In the previous Alicia's Books we had Falling in Love, When I See your Smile etc., which are basically Love Songs but with different titles. Since I am now too lazy to be fancy and being poetic and nostalgic, I will from now on put numbers and simply call them as they are, Love Songs. Just the musical notes are enough to make me feel mellow, let alone in thinking the exact situation that triggered the music! ............................................................................................................................................. Apart from a new "piece of cake" for 4 hands, there are also 2 sets of Variations, not as difficult as Rapsodia Nusantara, based on a children's songs. This would serve for a quite-but-not-so virtuosic piece for young pianists in their concerts. ............................................................................................................................................. About Variations on Kupu-kupu I wrote these following lines, kept in my computer and forgot to publish it in my blog: Now that the Foundation for Autistic Children commissioned me for a new piece based on a famous children song "Kupu-kupu" (by the very popular children songwriter, the late Ibu Sud), I gotta succeed in making a quite elaborate (I mean longer than the pieces in Alicia's Piano Books) showpiece but playable by intermediate pianists. And yeah, in the midst of orchestrating my opera Tumirah, I finished a Theme and 5 variations on it. I finished them just now, in a hotel in near the beautiful town of Arnuero. I am serving as the president of the jury for their International Chamber Music Competition this weekend. One thing which is nice about writing "not-so-difficult" pieces is that one doesn't need a piano to try everything, unlike writing the Rapsodias where I constantly had to go to the piano and check whether something is (not) playable by our poor over-exploited fingers. ............................................................................................................................................. Now that my friends in 5 cities are organizing a piano competition for young people, I regularly talk to them too about this. Especially Eveline Philips in Makassar who told me that in Alicia's Piano Books very easy piano pieces are lacking. I mean very, like, for real beginners, just a few months touching the keys. Anyway, it's been nice chatting with her while writing several very easy and short pieces. I don't always succeed, as I said about it's not easy writing easy pieces, but I got some for Alicia's 6th Piano Book. And yeah, it's a wonderful initiative those friends of mine have about this Piano Nusantara competition. The idea is each of them in their respective cities organize a competition, and then the winner of each city would be eligible to do the Grand Finale in Jakarta. And it's a very friendly one, unlike the Ananda Sukarlan Award, which is tough. The idea is to show the (very) young pianists that competitions are not meant to "kill" them. Everyone is a winner, they will receive comments from the judges, and they can prepare any kind of music they want. The 2 things they have to comply are: 1. They have to prepare 2 pieces, one by an Indonesian composer and the other by a classical international one, you know, Bach, Schumann and those guys. 2. The duration, which as usual there is a limit. You can check everything out at pianonusantara.wordpress.com . ............................................................................................................................................. The composer would like to thank Eveline Philips and her team at the Grazioso Music School in Makassar, South Sulawesi for her inputs and her gradings of each of the pieces. She is a pioneer of classical piano playing in the island of Sulawesi, and one of the very few first timers in the East of Indonesia. We all hope that she would serve as a catalyst for many more pianists and piano teachers in that region to bloom.