Kata Pengantar untuk Final Kompetisi Piano Nusantara, Agustus 2017

Following my article for The Jakarta Post I posted a few days ago, here is my own writing for the program book of the Final Round of Kompetisi Piano Nusantara 2017. This is a competition held in several cities (as you can read in the previous entry) and the Finals are in Jakarta, where winners of the regional semi finals are given scholarship to Jakarta to join the finals and to join masterclasses. This is in Indonesian, so please use google translate. It's talking (and to be precise, lamenting) about the conditions of piano competitions in Indonesia that is wildly proliferating and, some of them, lacking qualities. ............................................................................................................................................ Dear para pemenang, ............................................................................................................................................ Kompetisi Piano Nusantara edisi pertama sudah sampai di penghujung, dan kami para penyelenggara ingin mengucapkan selamat kepada anda semua, para pemenang. Anda bukan hanya pemenang kompetisi piano, tapi pemenang dalam kehidupan. Soalnya, seorang pemenang adalah seseorang yang mengenali talenta yang diberikan Tuhan, mendedikasikan hidupnya dengan fokus untuk mengembangkannya menjadi ketrampilan, dan menggunakan ketrampilan ini untuk meraih cita-citanya yang nantinya akan berguna buat orang banyak (yang akan lebih baik lagi kalau bukan hanya untuk orang-orang terdekatnya yang berpendapat, berpandangan politik atau beragama yang sama). ............................................................................................................................................ Ini adalah kompetisi untuk membuat kita semua jadi lebih baik, bukan hanya ajang guru-guru rebutan murid atau berusaha membuat kelompok sendiri untuk menjatuhkan kelompok (baca: sekolah musik) yang lain. Kompetisi ini ditujukan untuk generazi Z yang katanya lebih tidak fokus daripada generasi milenial karena adanya social media dan gadgets, yang attention span-nya juga lebih rendah tapi lebih serba-bisa; lebih individual, lebih global, berpikiran lebih terbuka, lebih cepat terjun ke dunia kerja dan profesionalisme, lebih toleran dan tentu saja lebih ramah teknologi. Menurut saya, inilah generasi paling berpengaruh, unik, dan beragam dari yang pernah ada dalam sejarah manusia. Di generasi Z lah kita menaruh harapan bahwa musik sastra Indonesia bisa bersanding dengan musik negara-negara lain yang sudah lebih dahulu maju, atau .... yang tidak bisa mempertahankan supremasinya seperti di beberapa negara asalnya di Eropa. Generasi Z lah yang akan mengerti bagaimana mengimplementasikan musik sastra Indonesia untuk kemakmuran dan menaikkan kecerdasan bangsa di saat jurang perbedaan semakin lebar antara yang kaya dan yang miskin, yang progresif dan yang konservatif, yang terdidik dan yang tertinggal karena termakan tipuan atau iming-iming surga dari ajaran-ajaran agama yang sesat. Dan ini semua harus dilakukan di era social media yang merajai kehidupan kita serta media cetak yang besok lusa akan punah. ............................................................................................................................................ Sometimes we win, sometimes we learn. Dan di Kompetisi Piano Nusantara ini, we are all winners, tapi juga we are all learners, trying to be better than we are now. ............................................................................................................................................ Ananda Sukarlan, twitter & IG : @anandasukarlan

When Winning is not Everything (Jakarta Post, Nov. 30, 2016)

As usual, this article that I post here is the original, unedited and uncut. But since this article was published, 2 more organizers held this competition: Nitya Music Studio in Surabaya and Melodi Musik at Semarang. ............................................................................................................................................ Indonesian problems need Indonesian solutions. This magic formula of mine has, time and again, proved to work in classical music. We can observe the bleak classical music scene in Europe from our country with a telescope, and imagine that it could be the future for us. And the good news is, we can enter a paralel universe where the future is finer. Where classical music is alienated in the society no more. Where it is a natural part of young people's lives. Where people could naturally differentiate it from pop music, just as they could easily differentiate tweets, facebook status from poetry and novels. But of course to create that future we should work on the present. ............................................................................................................................................ Nusantara Piano Competition (Kompetisi Piano Nusantara) is a new concept that could contribute to this future. It has the idea to prepare young pianists under 18 to join the "tougher" competitions. It suits very well for this country which is so spread out both geographically and culturally, and joining competitions can be a big financial issue, since the participants have to think about the plane tickets and accomodations, let alone adapting themselves to another city (in case of Jakarta, a bigger one with its traffic problems). The concept is that organizers in their respective cities organize a local competition, and then the winner of each city would be eligible to do the Grand Finale in Jakarta. Grazioso Music School (Makassar, 6-7 November), Nirai Music School (Jogjakarta, 17-18), Musicland (Bandung, 25-26) and Ananda Sukarlan Center (Jakarta, 27) teamed up and each organized a competition which happily resulted in approximately 200 young pianists participating, with the youngest being 5 years old. With this concept, someone from Semarang could just join in Jogjakarta, and the one from Palu could go to the nearest city, Makassar. And as I expected, hidden amazing talents have been spotted. The Nusantara competition is a very friendly one, unlike the Ananda Sukarlan Award, which is considered tough and designed for the very prepared pianists who are at the first steps of making a career. The idea is to show (very) young pianists that competitions are not meant to "kill" them. Everyone is a winner and they can prepare any kind of music they want. The 2 requirements 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 such as Bach, Schumann and such. 2. The duration, which as usual there is a limit. The end of November marked its finalization in 4 cities of Indonesia. The first prizewinners of the advanced category (13-17 years) are : Vivienne Thamrin (Makassar), Ralf Vivaldo (Jogjakarta), and a double first prizewinners Michael Manuel Halim and M. Khidir Malik for Bandung. Nobody reached the standard minimum point in Jakarta for this category, so the First Prize was not awarded. Surabaya is postponed for now and the competition is looking for another local partner organizer. Other cities are welcome to join in for organizing one before the Grand Final in Jakarta in the mid of the year 2017 where the finalists have to prepare other 2 pieces with the same requierements but different from the ones played in the semifinal rounds. ............................................................................................................................................ Music competitions are the usual way of starting a musical career. In the piano world, one usually join competitions when they are under 26 or 27 years old. I never take a musician seriously if they never joined a competition in their lives. Even if one doesn't win, joining a competition proves that one is serious in pursuing one's musical career, or at least testing one's capability in music. For me, joining already means winning. Winning against yourself, winning against your own fear. If you don't fight for what you love, don't cry for what you lose. But the toughest competition is not against other musicians. It's against yourself. You are your worst enemy. ............................................................................................................................................ There are, then, the ones who win prizes. I have observed some traits of these prizewinners: 1. They know how to choose their music which suits their personality and contains depth of artistry, a wide range of pianistic techniques, colours and dynamics and a rich variety of contrasts and characters. A few of them fell into the trap of picking "easy listening --and easy playing" music which couldn't exhibit their artistry and virtuosity to full throttle. The contrary also happened: a few picked pieces of music which are too difficult or advanced for them. 2. They perform to express, not to impress. They communicate, not to show off. Some pianists can shine bright in fast passages but become so dull in slow parts, where melodies abound and beauty is exposed simply in bare passages without any virtuosic cosmetics. It is not easy to be simple; in fact, simplicity is the peak of sophistication. Those deep and quiet passages, instead of the ones full of exhilarating running notes and sizzling chords and octaves, are the ultimate test of the artistry of a musician. ............................................................................................................................................ Since piano competitions have now proliferated like mushrooms in this country, it is inevitable that there are positive and negative impacts. Unfortunately, there is still no standardization as well as the assessment of the quality of the judges (and organizers) so the participants often become victims, either intentionally or unintentionally. Indonesia is perhaps now the country with the most piano competitions in the world. There is one organized almost every weekend, although still mostly in Java. Some of them are controlled by business people, although claiming to "understand" or even having the basic techniques and knowledge in music, their aim is to amass money from the (some still) ignorant young pianists, their parents and piano teachers through backdoor business: secret agreements, commissions, nepotism etc. It is the ugly business of beautiful music. But we should be optimistic that quantity would ultimately give way to quality, and that participants of the future would be more selective in choosing which competitions they would join. ............................................................................................................................................ That is why transparency was, and will always be my basic requirement when "Nusantara" organizers (or therefore any other competitions) asked me to be their patron and the head of the jury in several cities. Each of the judges' comments and points are written down, signed by the judge, and handed to the participants after the competition is finished. If they (do not) like what the judges write, they are free to post it in social media. Indeed the social media should be a big help in this issue, since everyone is also free to record their performance and post it on YouTube. It is time for the participants to speak out against injustice in the competitions before it's too late. The judges' decisions are final, but everyone can listen to the performances and have their own opinions too. It is up to them then to speak out or not. Laymen of the arts are not eligible to judge in official competitions, and what they express could not alter the results of the competition. But as Desmond Tutu said once, "If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor." Experts are eligible, sure, but they should not contribute only with their expertise, but also with honesty. This latter is not written down in the contract, since it is almost impossible to prove in this artistic world filled with ambiguity. And this is the moment when you can be part of the rise (or fall) of classical music in our country.