My original article for Jakarta Post Aug 7th

This article of mine was published in The Jakarta Post on Saturday, August 7, but unfortunately was edited in some parts that changed some meanings ... and even became erroneous. Here is the original script I sent to them. If you want to read their published one --with nice photos! courtesy of fpsitb.com-- you can click http://www.thejakartapost.com/news/2010/08/07/bandung-‘madzical’-week.html . So, here it is, originally:

Bandung "Madz-ical" Week

If you think you should be Harry or Hermione and attend Hogwarts School to find magic, you are dead wrong. There was magic all around during the ITB International Choir Competition in Bandung held from July 25th to August 1st where I had the honour to serve as one of the jury member together with my distinguished colleagues such as Jonathan Velasco and Mark Anthony Carpio (the Philippines choir conductors), Dr. Wong Su Sun (Singaporean well-known opera singer), Carl Crossin (director of Adelaide Conservatory of Music, Australia), Dr. David Hughes & Dr. Brady Allred (American conductors), the Indonesian sopranos of 2 generations : Mme. Catharine W. Leimena and Aning Katamsi and prominent choir activist Aida Swenson. I admire the decision of ITB (Institut Teknologi Bandung) to invite (and trust!) a composer to be take part as a judge. Yes, the majority of my works involve the human voice (more than for the piano as my main instrument), but if I start to sing I'd scare even the tiniest creature around me. The participants are judged from so many aspects : the singing technique of their singers, the art of blending their voices to create "colours", the depth of their musical ideas, their understanding of the form and harmonic progressions as well as the solid construction of the song they perform (these latter criterias are particularly my job) and not so much their choreographic movements (only if it is too excessive that it disturbs the quality of their musical performance). Therefore, pure music.

I always say that the human voice is the best musical instrument on this planet, and last week I self-confirmed it again. There were incredible works of music wonderfully performed during the week that have really spoken directly to the audience's heart, and I'd mention a few such as : "hope, faith, love, life" by Eric Whitacre, We Beheld Once Again The Stars (Z. Randall Strope) or Indra Listiyanto's choral arrangement of the Sundanese folksong Bubuy Bulan. But one thing I noticed from the whole week is the comparatively few amount of "substantial" music programmed by the participating choirs. True, there are so many good choral music, but sometimes they don't automatically deserve to be called good music. Some good choral music exploit the choral techniques to their limits, such as the use of sound effects, hoquetus and antiphonal techniques, but so many composers forget that those techniques are simply means and not ends. Truly great music still lies in its basic elements : its harmony, melody, rhtyhms and the composer's craftmanship in using them and of course its communicative power to the audience. Not in its special effects (which can be highly attractive and fascinating) no matter how virtuosic they can (appear to) be.

I would mention another thing, not only as a composer but as an Indonesian : There are so many choral arrangements of Indonesian folksongs that are so "un-Indonesian" performed last week. I firmly believe that a composer should keep in mind the roots and tradition of the folksong he arranges. So many folksongs have been blurred out from its original melody and character, and its arrangements are more suited for a part of an ersatz Broadway musical or even a quasi-jazz club. Worse still, some could be part of both and a Jamaican rhumba bar and a flamenco show in Sevilla, changing places in just a matter of seconds! This problem, I believe, lies in the ignorance of musical knowledge and not so much from the compositional (I should say arrangement) technique from the arrangers, and I hope not from the (national) identity crisis of our arrangers (and composers). During the course of the week I have talked to and advised some composers present during the competition to analyze the folksongs arrangements of great composers of the past and present, such as the Hungarian Bela Bartok or the Australian Peter Sculthorpe; not to imitate what they have done, but to simply learn how those great masters did it. "Attraction" and "entertainment" should not be the main aim when you do a piece of art, it is depth and honesty of expression, a well-defined character and artistic quality instead.

But as I said, apart from those minor shortcomings in programmings and folksong arrangements, this prestigious bienal competition has contributed so many positive things to classical music of today, choral music in particular. Two things stood out clearly during the festival, and those are the performance of the Philippines Madrigal Singers (who were chosen as the 2009 UNESCO Artist of Peace) and the success of ITB's great effort in performing the world premiere of my piece "Stanza Suara" which turned out to be the first piece written for choir and orchestra involving a set of musicians playing angklung, the traditional bamboo instruments of West Java.

When ITB commissioned me to write a piece for their inauguration of this year's festival and for their theme song for their next ones, they specifically asked me to involve the angklung instruments. Angklung has never been involved in "western classical" music, and from the first note I wrote I intentionally didn't integrate the West Javanese musical elements in my music. I want to write one piece of music of mine, not a patchwork made by a Mahlerian orchestration of some West Javanese look-alike tunes. Problems aroused when working with the angklung players, since they are not used to read notes and even follow the (classical music) conductor's gestures. It turned out to be quite complex to rehearse and perform, due to the different ways of perceiving music of the orchestral musicians, singers of the choir and the angklung players, but conductor Indra Listiyanto managed to do a great job in uniting them all, and most importantly, making Stanza Suara one piece with a solid construction.

About Philippines Madrigal "Madz" Singers, this would sound rather exaggerating, but I am not. And I am not one who is easily impressed, but I honestly was. The Madz did a full concert of virtuosic pieces. Again, I personally did object (certainly the public did not!) to a couple of "circus" pieces that amazed the audience such as the shallow game of percussive-like sounds by the Canadian Murray Schaeffer "Gamelan" which sounded anything but (the composer even got the Balinese mode wrong!), nevertheless I am glad to discover some valuable gems such as "De Profundis" by the Philippines composer John A. Pamintuan which is a virtuosic (also compositionally speaking) passacaglia on the word "De Profundis". However, all those virtuosic pieces were performed exactly as they were demanded : virtuosic, in a highly musical, artistic, amazing way with great and refined taste and with a continuing sharp focus on the minute details. They are performing again in Surabaya on the 7th and Jakarta (Usmar Ismail Hall) on the 10th, and you'll certainly regret it if you miss them.

Although the Philippine Normal University Chorale (PNUC) finally won the Grand Champion of this prestigious event, I would like to mention the high artistry and achievements of some Indonesian choirs who had won the Gold Medals of some categories. We certainly are proud of Paragita Choir's both female and male choirs (these students of Universitas Indonesia both competed separately to win the first prizes of their category ... and then competed with each other in the final round to acquire the Grand Champion title!), Agria Swara Choir of Institut Pertanian Bogor, Universitas Tarumanegara Choir with their conductor Angela Astri Soemantri (who I as a jury member voted for the Best Promising Conductor, and am still believing it), Gita Smala Youth Choir of Surabaya and St. Angela Youth Choir of Bandung with their conductor Roni Sugiarto who at last won the Best Promising Conductor title of this year's competition. They have won medals in other choral competitions abroad during the last years, and surely will keep on doing so in the years to come.

Last but not least, BRAVO to ITB for organizing this gigantic festival. It certainly has put Bandung on the map. And in our hearts.

Relationships

Manuel Guillen is considered one of the most important violinist in Spain in developing and enriching the violin repertoire of today. His most important contribution is perhaps his commissioning and championing the incredibly virtuosic Violin Concerto by Spain's hottest composer, David del Puerto. Not mentioning violin pieces by Jesus Rueda, Jose Manuel Lopez and other big Spaniards in music of the present day.

We had fun in recording two short violin+piano pieces of mine (Sweet Sorrow and The Sleepers) together with another beautiful piece by Santiago Lanchares for a CD of music for handicapped pianists (Santiago's and mine are for 2-fingered right hand pianist). After the recording Manuel Guillen asked me to write a piece for violin solo, with a special request that he would like it to be "lyrical, like most of my music", to be included in his repertoire and hopefully many other violinists.

That was last year. I told him then that it would be long before I could write one. There were "urgent" pieces at that time : my third opera "Pro Patria" and my orchestral-choral-angklung piece "Stanza Suara" commissioned to inaugurate that mammoth festival of ITB. The scary thing is that 95% of all musicians involved in vocal music in Indonesia, plus a few hundreds from some Asian countries will be there to hear my piece live. So it's not that Stanza Suara would be enjoyed; it would be, strictly speaking, JUDGED! Now that both huge pieces are -thank God!- finished, I could take a break and write for just 1 instrument. Whew, I tell you, it feels REALLY good to write just in one pentagram line after months of writing all those huge chords and complex polyphony of my previous pieces!

In this new violin piece I want to experiment in "relationships" of different musical materials which have nothing to do with each other to be put in one piece. In order to do that, they must have something, even very small, in common, otherwise the piece won't have a solid form, therefore I should think of a motif that binds them all. Now, "relationship" in Indonesian is "relasi", which comes from the Dutch word "relatie". As I am in the mood of using people's name initials as motifs for my piece now the motif for "Manuel's piece" comes by itself. What else but Re-La-Si?

So, I had been working on Relationships this weekend, prior to the most important week for the Indonesian classical music scene, the national piano competition Ananda Sukarlan Award. Relasi is a kind of variations without a theme, only bound to each other by a simple motif of 3 notes: Re, La, Si. Writing the variations, I am thinking of the characters of the people I had relationships with in the past, not necessarily the amorous ones. That explains the nostalgic flavor of the piece. Now, if Manuel asks a composer to write a piece, one usually tends to exploit his extremely accomplished technical virtuosity. And so do I. But I won't this time. I am thinking of young violinists, those young ones who are having relationships, some beautiful, and some complicated. Like those I had in the past.

Re-la-si is a motif which I apparently have used in my tiny song for a birthday present to my dear friend Karina Suklan, based on a poem by WS Rendra, "Tidurlah Intan". I wasn't thinking of the meaning of "relasi" then; I was purely thinking in the intervals. Now, those 3 notes appear again in another piece of mine. And needless to say, these two pieces are not re-la-ted. They are two completely different pieces each with its own character...and weirdness.

Now you write pop music ?

Many questions and reactions, with a bit of cynical tone have come from my classical music colleagues about my pop song “Tembang Gesang” I wrote for the "Idol Divo" winners of Indonesian Idol (that’s the Indonesian version of Americal Idol TV program). Why did I do that, and will I continue doing that?

I’ll answer the first question with another question : what’s wrong with writing pop music, if you can do it? And for the second question, my answer is that I doubt if I would do another pop song. I might, why not? Anyway, I am he who would like to try as many things as possible in life. Some things I regretted doing, but others (like writing a pop song) I don’t regret at all; I just feel it’s not the thing I want to do in life, even if I could earn much more money from it.

We, classical musicians, don’t have to be arrogant. We don’t have to tell the world that we are smarter than the other musicians, just because we need years of higher education to make (and/or play) the music we love. And I can prove that we are NOT smarter than pop musicians: just think of how much money they make, and how much (to be precise : little) do we, classical musicians, make? Is it because classical music is better music, so that it becomes too exclusive? Is our music only destined to a select, distinguished audience? “Culture which is exclusive is determined not to last long”, said Mohandas Gandhi, and I couldn’t agree more.

And why is classical music considered "better" music? Is it because our harmonies --and their progressions- are much more sophisticated? Is it because contrapuntally it's much more complex? Is it because great music needs a much more elaborated form and structure? If so, to who does it matter? Who has the right to determine the "better" and "worse" things?
And is it because there has been numerous researches and analysis in classical music ? Yes, of course future Ph.Ds are writing their thesis based on Britten's or Beethoven's or (I have the honour of which I don't think I deserve) my music, but do you know that there is a faculty of music in Liverpool now where you can study the music of the Beatles ? You can be a university graduate and be a Beatles scholar now. Yes, yes, perhaps its importance in the history of music is more on its social aspects, but that is also important, right ?

"Classical" style (whatever that means) is the music I love doing. If I write pop songs it would be betraying what I really feel I should do. Besides, I write pop music because I can, not because of artistic necessity. And I can, but there are many more people who can do it better, and even studied and educated in it thoroughly.

Looking forward, and Foreword to Ananda Sukarlan Award 2010

This time my entry is in Indonesian, which is the foreword for ASA 2010.

"Music is the food of love" (William Shakespeare).
"Like food, if it's instant, it is junk" (Ananda Sukarlan)

Ananda Sukarlan Award 2010 kembali kami selenggarakan di tengah keadaan yang serba instan yang semakin marak. Ketenaran dan karir yang diraih langsung dari atas adalah ciri khas "seni" pertunjukan saat ini di Indonesia. Sayang sekali banyak yang lupa, jika anda mendarat langsung di puncak gunung, jalan satu-satunya yang ada hanyalah kebawah. Saya tidak pernah percaya ramalan baik Joyoboyo maupun Nostradamus, tapi saya hanya selalu percaya pada satu ramalan saja, yaitu dari seniman Andy Warhol di tahun 70-an: "In the future, everybody will be famous for 15 minutes". Dan hal itu sedang dalam proses realisasinya, baik berkat siaran-siaran TV dari Amerika Serikat yang menjanjikan ke"seniman"an dalam beberapa bulan sampai penawaran predikat "terbaik", "terbanyak" dan banyak ter- lainnya yang harganya lebih murah daripada sebuah mobil termurah pun. Masih terus terngiang-ngiang di telinga kita persembahan Glenn Gould memainkan Goldberg Variations dari tahun 70-an, atau konser terakhir Leonard Bernstein yang legendaris mengekspresikan Four Sea Interludes dari Benjamin Britten di tahun 1990. Tapi saat ini sebuah kejadian atau kreasi seni penting, betapapun tinggi nilai artistiknya, betapapun besar karya seninya, hanya akan terkenang selama sebuah status facebook belum diganti. Tidak ada lagi misteri dan ambiguitas lagi di dalam sebuah karya seni, karena semua misteri kini bisa dipecahkan lewat google.

Saya merasa sangat terharu bahwa ada sekitar 60 (dan pasti lebih lagi diluar ini) peserta ASA 2010 yang masih percaya akan jalan yang sulit dan berliku-liku dan "kuno" dalam dunia seni, khususnya musik sastra. Jalan tradisional inilah yang saya yakin akan menempa mereka menjadi seniman sejati yang mengerti liku-liku dunia ini, yang mau belajar dari kesalahan, yang mau menerima kritik dan kekurangan untuk memperbaikinya, yang mau jatuh berkali-kali tapi bangun berkali-kali lagi. Tidak ada kata "kalah" dalam dunia seni, tidak ada kata "salah" dalam berkespresi. Yang ada hanyalah introspeksi dan kerja keras yang terus menerus untuk mencapai puncak yang tidak akan bisa diraih oleh manusia manapun di planet ini, yang bernama "kesempurnaan".

Saya ingin mengucapkan selamat kepada para peserta ASA 2010. Dan juga rekan-rekan juri yang terdiri dari musikus-musikus yang sangat saya hormati dan kagumi yang punya kepercayaan yang sama dengan saya, terima kasih sedalam-dalamnya saya ucapkan. Tuhan memberkati anda dalam berkompetisi dengan anda sendiri untuk menjadi anda yang lebih baik di masa depan.

Pianistically yours,

Ananda Sukarlan
www.musik-sastra.com

What is in a name?

I always like those weird short pieces by the American composer Virgil Thomson called "Portraits". The creative process of those pieces (hundreds of them) was always that the "model" sits in front of the composer, while he "painted" them, so it was exactly like the creative process of a painter.

Now I've never been musically inspired by the physical look of anyone, no matter how stunning. But I do like to play around with something that one has in him/her. And of course I like that Schumannesque game of putting initials of people's names as motifs of his work.

That's the background of my two short pieces, "To Adam G" and "Whooosh!" which will be included in my book, "Alicia's Second Piano Book", as well as the most recent "Finnley's Fanfare" for solo piccolo. This time, other people, who I should say friends, "helped" me write the music. "To Adam G" was written for the Hungarian pianist Adam Gyorgy as a gratitude for his invitation to the winners of Ananda Sukarlan Award to come to his summer masterclasses in Hungary last year. It is based on a motif built on his name : A.D.A.M(i) G. And "Whooosh!" (yeah, the music does sound like that!) was for Inge Buniardi, a very talented young Indonesian pianist now living in Amsterdam. It's based on her initials : A(nastasia) MI (Melania Inge, which should have been Inge Melania) B(uniardi).

2 days ago I received the good news that my good friends Rudy & Liz had a new baby boy, Finnley. Elizabeth Ashford is a flutist and has practically played all my music involving that instrument, and she's had this futile attempt in encouraging me to write for the instrument that I hate the most : the piccolo. But Rudy's email, curiously enough, gave me the idea of writing "Finnley's Fanfare", and unfortunately the initials of the piece's title is "FF", which is the perfect dynamics of a piccolo piece. I was totally stressed with my yet unfinished opera AND the rehearsal of our performance for these days to celebrate the 5th year anniversary of Chendra Panatan and me working together. Luckily I now have this tiny Lenovo laptop --am still fascinated by its really small size and how my operas and other works can fit inside it--, so in bed at 1 a.m after the exhausting rehearsal the whole day I relaxed myself writing the piccolo (and it's also tiny!) piece. I wonder why I always compose much more fluently lying down; is it because my brain receives more blood and therefore more oxygen? Anyway, hope that the number of pieces based on friends' initials will grow, since it's really fun to compose like that. It's like playing sudoku or making anagrams, you know what I mean?

The problem of the opera, and a new look at KAMA

That is a stupid title, I know. Operas only poses problems. Or shall we say, if you are a composer and you wanna complicate your life, write an opera. But there are crazier people than composers : those who want to produce (an) opera(s). It's not an easy business. Right from the very beginning, one needs not only singers, but singers who can act, understand the language (yea yea, it's much more than just memorizing. It's a matter of understanding completely the text), sometimes dance. And like any other actors, they should be willing to learn new things. In Verdi's Aida they should learn how to ride a horse, and in mine ... ride a bicycle!

My third opera which I am writing now (and almost finished, thank God!) will be the "real" opera of mine. It is commissioned by Bimasena, who also was responsible for the birth of my second cantata LIBERTAS. My first two had only 2 and 1 soloists, and they can be called "chamber operas" (they made a sequel, both on Seno Gumira Ajidarma's fantastic drama scripts). This time it involves lots of soloists (4 baritones, 1 tenor who plays the very small but very important role as Soekarno, our first president, and 1 soprano), who have to really act (and even dance) and a real orchestra to accompany it. And now I understand why Verdi and Wagner were all nuts. I am letting all kinds of outer influences being absorbed and manifest themselves in this opera : Michael Jackson, Stravinsky, Salvador Dali, Chendra's choreography, Andy Warhol's pop art, avantgardism of the 1960s (especially the artistry of Cathy Barberian and Luciano Berio), Shakira ... and the long list continues. All this meshed into my (what I consider) "personal artistic" elements, or to say it in a different way, I stole all those exciting stuff and make an "arty" (read: "boring") version of them all. Just like what I did with my previous operas ; if you'd seen them you might slightly detect how Michael Jackson and Madonna influenced me so much. And I am doing one thing here for the first time in my life : write an additional libretto. Not so much though, but it's quite an attempt. Until now, not one word of the texts for my works are mine. And to be honest I don't really like those words I wrote too much, --apart from the fact that it took me too much time!-- so I'll stick with other people's texts in the future Writing one word took as long as writing a few bars of music for me.

This third opera of mine is called "Pro Patria". That title is mine. About 90% of the libretto is taken from the conversations in the novel "Kalah dan Menang" (To lose and to win), written by the late great Indonesian writer Sutan Takdir Alisjahbana (STA). I studied Britten's libretto on his masterpiece "A Midsummernight's Dream" and learned how skillfully he extracted Shakespeare's play into the libretto of his opera. Without previous study of Britten, I would've been lost in the creative process of my opera. Sometimes I modified a few words in STA's sentences, but it won't change the atmosphere of STA's language. It is set around the 1940s, when the Japanese managed to get rid of the Dutch in their occupancy in Indonesia. The novel itself goes on until the 1950s, but I finish my opera with Soekarno (our first president) reading the Declaration of Independence, August 17th, 1945. Anyway, I laughed at the fact that the libretto of my first 2 operas are by SGA, and this time is by STA. And my initial is AS. Needless to say, obviously I play with the motif built on the notes "A" and "(e)S" in this opera. Sharing 2 letters of our initial, as I have experienced with SGA, would hopefully bring good luck again this time.

A post scriptum on my song, KAMA. Bernadeta Astari, my young & supertalented soprano friend who has sang many of my songs (and the dedicatee of my song-cycle "Senyap Dalam Derai") did a fantastic final exam yesterday at the Utrecht Conservatory. She acquired a 10+ for her mark, so she repeated history that I made 17 years ago. Now this should warn our fellow Indonesian music students, that this mark should not wait another 17 years to be repeated, ok folks?
She sang KAMA at her exam, and many people were moved to tears. I wasn't there, but our friends told me how powerful she did it. It was one of the highlights of her recital (yeah, knowing her, a concert could have many highlights!) And also bravissimma to her pianist, Kanako Inoue. The piano part of that song is not easy, not technically and even more "interpretatively" whatever it means. The silences are more difficult than the notes! In fact I never dared to think highly on that song. It was my very first setting of an Indonesian text, therefore I was still searching and trying many things in that piece. The poem was so powerful, written in a prison by Ilham Malayu, about his feeling of missing his son after 5 years or so rotting in jail and forgotten by the world. Not only it was my first Indonesian song, it was my first piece written exclusively in a non-modulating pentatonic scale. So it was a huge breakthrough for me. And I am glad that it works out well. Anyway, this experience has taught me that one's first attempt doesn't have to be a failure, or worse than one's next attempts. It would sound like an idiot, but honestly I haven't felt 100% sure in setting poems until now, after 3 operas and about 100 songs ; I still feel like a beginner!

The sound of .... music?

These last few days am putting finishing touches to my work Stanza Suara for big choir, orchestra and angklung which I mentioned here in March. It's only about 8 minutes long, but it took much more time than usual for me to write, due to many things : my unfamiliarity with the angklung instruments and how to write for them and integrate it into my own language (it will be played by amateur players which always complicate the situation), my travellings and my musical intentions which also complicate my own life. The poem by Hasan Aspahani is a wonderful one but strangely enough it didn't immediately "sound" in my head --which turned out to be a good thing, since this long process matured the music in my head. This angklung business isn't easy stuff either, since it will be part of its presentation to the UNESCO (the UNESCO director is planned to come to its premiere in Bandung during the ITB International Choir Festival who commissioned the piece) to establish it as the Indonesian National Heritage. So I should show the world that it's not just children's toy, it's a musical instrument as serious as a french horn!

I want to emulate the evolution of sound since its creation throughout this 8-minute piece. It was too big an idea, I know ... and in fact I am toying the idea to extend the piece in the future, since there are lots of underdeveloped materials in the piece, although the underlying foundation is simple : from unpitched noise, through the most basic intervals (fifths, thirds to the most "recent" interval of tritone) reaches the triumphal tonality in the end. Basically the interval of perfect fifths appear as the motif throughout the piece. Inevitably the piece goes through a lot of styles, from the baroque polyphony up to ....ehm, Jerry Goldsmith or John Williams type of epic film music and even a touch of Shakira sexy rhythms. All those are served on one tray of "Western" orchestration mixed with bamboo instruments, my usual chords and dotted rhtyhms and even constructed with the fractal geometry principals in mind (by changing the word "space" into "time", and "size" into "duration") so hopefully one can find a unity of musical language throughout the whole piece. I mean, Palestrina, Schumann, John Williams and Javanese gamelan players all exploited the interval of fifths and major/minor thirds, right? Same intervals but different usage and different perceptions by different people & culture. That's the point I wanna say in the piece.
Anyway, I do learn a lot from writing Stanza Suara. One of them is that this is the first time I write music (I mean a structurally complex one, not a 3 minute song or piano piece) really from beginning to end! However, I couldn't break the habit of writing backwards during finishing the orchestration of the piece, so I sent it to the players (ITB Choir) starting from the last section. And for your information, I still read all books (especially fiction stories) jumping to the end after the first pages. And then finish the rest of it, obviously. Oh well, old habits never die. I wonder what psychologists would say about this.

As usual, I work on 2 pieces at the same time, so these days I am also working on my opera Pro Patria to be premiered around the same time of Stanza Suara (and coincidentally both have repeated letters for their initials!). Am gonna write about my opera in my next entry. When Stanza Suara is completely finished (hopefully in a few days), I'll need another piece to write together with my opera, and almost certainly it will be a new Rapsodia Nusantara.Part of it is already written. Its ending, of course, is already complete.

A rhapsodic blackout

Thanks so much to all of you who have come all the way to the fantastic World Theatre at Bintaro (South of Jakarta) to come to my piano concert last Sunday. I do feel rather guilty to make you all travel that far, but I hope I've made your odyssey worth it. And sorry for the blackout (electricity, not my brain!) during and before the concert; I should say that the timing of the blackout was very precise, eh? Right after our great tenor Dani Dumadi finished his performance. Imagine if it had happened during my sporty running and jumping fingers during Rapsodia Nusantara.... Anyway, that blackout was the second time that it happened during a concert of mine. The first time was during my first concert in Moscow, back in 1995. At that time, the timing wasn't that good: it was in the middle of my playing of a Rachmaninov Prelude. It was almost the end, so I just creeped to the last note ... and then started making jokes waiting for the lights to turn on again. Nobody laughed at my jokes, so either : 1. My jokes weren't funny. 2. The Russians didn't understand English, or 3. Those serious Russians came to see me play and not joke around, so they thought I should've stopped making a fool of myself and meditate in the darkness instead.

Oh and I would like to congratulate my guest stars in that concert: the 12-year-old (you won't notice it when you hear her play) Victoria Audrey Sarasvathi (the youngest finalist of the Ananda Sukarlan Award (ASA) 2008) and Dani Dumadi, the tenor who fantastically sang my 6 songs for high voice. Their contributions to the success of the concert were invaluable. Both are newcomers here, Dani since he just came back from the US, and Audrey because of her age, but you should remember their names coz they'll gonna hang around up there, and very high above!

Anyway, I must admit that I had a hidden agenda performing my RN #4. As you know, it's the obligatory work for the Ananda Sukarlan Award next July. I have received many complaints about how difficult it is ... and me performing it last Sunday was also to proof that it is not that difficult. I hope you got my point.

A friend of mine, Johannes S. Nugroho, a highly respected pianist and also Dean of the Music Faculty at the Pelita Harapan University couldn't make it to the concert due to a bacterial infection in his digestive system (it's been like a week that he'd been suffering, but he's recovering well, as I learn from his emails. Play lots of music with vitamin C major, Johannes! Get well soon!). He is very familiar with, and has worked with his students on a couple of my RN's. And here is what he said:

I think technically more or less is about the same as Rhapsody 1. And I even think musically this should be simpler since it is in a much less "rhapsodic" nature compared to the 1st one. So participants should be able to have less hardship in digesting #4. But both do require exceptional imagination from the pianists and somewhat an ability to grasp the structure beneath zillions of notes, otherwise, so sadly, these Rhapsodies can be more rhapsodic than you intended them to be:)

Thanks for the wish! I do need to get well, and well soon. J.

Well, there is one thing that I can tell. RN #4 is a bit longer (about 2 minutes, but it could be less if you play it faster! he he ...) than the obligatory work for ASA 2008 : RN #1. Well? So?