It ain't that easy ....

Am deeply immersed in the writing of my first (hopefully not the last) opera, Why did you kidnap our son ? . As this will be the first opera ever that uses "real" Indonesian language (not a poetic one), I am having trouble in some parts of it, especially the recitatives. I have no models to follow! (by the way, no complains to the script writer whose work I heavily edited -- not changed! -- , Seno Gumira Ajidarma ; he wrote a fantastic script !)
I've been watching a lot of operas by Mozart, Wagner, Britten and Bellini lately (oh, and Shosty's fantastic Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk. Enjoyed it sooo much but I don't know if it helps, since I don't understand any Russian. What one should be aware while composing is that the music should be communicative enough to people who do not understand the language of the vocal parts.) to see how they solve the problem of doing their dialogues. It's such a difficult language, Indonesian. I mean, I have written more than 50 songs based on Indonesian poems, but again, it's totally different from doing recitatives. An opera is not just a series of arias. Ohh... Being the first to do one thing is always a problem !

The arias are quite ok, the ensemble part is quite enjoyable to do (especially with Chendra's collaboration for the choreography ; basically all the movements, characteristics and durations came from him, so I am having an easy job on this), they don't pose many problems ... but uugh, those recitatives ! In Indonesian ! Can you imagine ? What shall I do with this bloody language ??? HEEELLLP !!! Aaarrrghh !!!

Another thing is that there is much violence in this opera, that somehow my "dark side" has surfaced ... and made me rather worried . I think this opera will be rated PG .... and all this after writing my new song-cycle "Love and Variations", and my sweetest, delicious, loveable cantata Ars Amatoria that includes a children choir !

Love and Variations

Just wrote the last note of "Kekasihku", a song based on Joko Pinurbo's poem, and that is the last note I wrote for "Love and Variations". This is a multi-lingual song-cycle (or perhaps a mini-cantata, if you like) based on 8 poems from 5 countries (Spain, Mexico, the USA, the UK and Indonesia) and from 3 centuries (the newest is Laksmi Pamuntjak's, written in 2001, and Joko Pinurbo's in 2003) . I've been promising to write about it for a few weeks, so here it is.

This is a piece commissioned by the American singers Kathryn Mueller (soprano), Nathan Krueger (baritone) and the Indonesian pianist Aryo Wicaksono. They all live in Arizona and are going to give the World Premiere of the whole cycle on the 25th of April this year, which will be the first of a series of performances throughout the US of this piece. Each of them sent me recordings of their previous performances which, I must say, are excellent, so I did think a lot of their characteristics while composing these songs. This is a piece I enjoyed very much in composing, since they are basically not strenuous to write (I wrote the songs one by one between breaks of concerts or composing other big works), and I was given freedom to choose whatever poems I like and suited my musical language. The first song was written already in October last year, and as I said, I finished the last song a few minutes ago. "Kekasihku" is a very light-hearted and witty song, and who else but Joko Pinurbo could capture that ironic yet profound atmosphere, inexplicable by words.

Each song can be performed separately, but if one wants to perform them as a whole, this is the order I would very much prefer :

1. Snowflakes (Henry W. Longfellow) -- ouch, the soprano starts by hitting a high note!
2. Glass Conservatory (Laksmi Pamuntjak)
3. Amor Eterno (Gustavo Adolfo Bécquer, in Spanish. This is dedicated to my good friends Leticia Martin & Ruben Rodriguez for their wedding present last November)
4. Hours Continuing Long, Sore and Heavy-Hearted (Walt Whitman) -- soprano and piano, and could be sung by a tenor as well
5. Kukirimkan Padamu (Sapardi Djoko Damono, in Indonesian) -- baritone solo, but couldn't be sung by a female voice !
6. So we'll go no more a-roving (Lord Byron)
7. Kekasihku (Joko Pinurbo, in Indonesian)
8. Si tu me dices ¡Ven! (Amado Nervo, in Spanish)

Ars Amatoria and New Year .... and what am I doing ??

Whew !!! So Ars Amatoria has at last been premiered. I was soooo glad that the performance went very well during the New Year Concert. At least, it wasn't raining and flooding, which is always our greatest fear every year during the rainy season. The publicity wasn't aggressive (Chendra's attention was divided in the managing, choreographing, stage directing, lighting, and dancing himself ; nevertheless, he did such a great job as usual), but some 800 people went to the concert ; not bad for a day where people in Jakarta wake up very late after partying the whole night .... out of town !!! Got a standing ovation after the cantata was over, which was quite a rare thing for the public of Jakarta to do so, therefore I am indeed very honoured.

Artistically there are many good things, and still some things to be revised for future performances and to leave the the definite score. First of all, the structure of Ars Amatoria works very well (it wasn't easy to make a 40-minute work, I tell you ! This is my first piece above 20 minutes). But some instrumentations and practicalities should be revised, especially because this piece is designed to be conducted from the piano. There won't be some heavy revisions though, and many have been done during the rehearsals ; they just haven't been copied to the score. I hope I can do it in just one day .

But not now ! I have to really, really sit down and start working on my opera. Yeah ! It's a commission from the Indonesian Opera Society, and it's about the tragedy of a kidnapping during the Suharto dictatorship era. The libretto is based on an existing script with the same title ("Mengapa Kau Culik Anak Kami?", or Why did you kidnap my son?)by Indonesia's famous writer, Seno Gumira Ajidarma. Chendra Panatan will do the stage directing, and also will dance as the kidnapped son, Satria (since he is interrogated and tortured but keeps silent during the process, there is no point of giving this role to a singer ; hence I give it to a dancer instead !) .

The World Premiere of this opera prima of mine is fixed to a date which is easy to remember : 8-8-08, at 8 p.m , at the Usmar Ismail Hall in Jakarta. Hope that date brings good luck .

But first, I have to finish a 15-minute song cycle "Love and Variations" for a premiere in Arizona in April. It´s almost finished, and I am going to write about it here when it's definitely finished.

Happy New Year and Happy New Ears to all of you music lovers !

Fauzi Bowo's gift to his wife : help those with AIDS

Last Sunday the 16th, the Singaporean Ambassador’s wife and one of the most charming and wonderful person I have met, Mrs. Gouri Mirpuri held a fund-raising concert for the AIDS Foundation by inviting me to play in her beautifully decorated residence in Central Jakarta (thanks to the US Ambassador for lending us his huge Christmas tree !). I then invited my two favourite singers to perform with me : the soprano Binu D. Sukaman and the tenor Farman Purnama. They sang my songs, and the whole thing reached climax when they sang my duet from Ars Amatoria, “Dalam Doaku” .
The concert was attended by the crème de la crème of Jakarta, among others Indonesia's former president Megawati Sukarnoputri, Deputy Governor of the central bank Dr. Miranda Goeltom, Indonesia’s top fashion designer Harry Darsono and Jakarta’s new governor, Mr. Fauzi Bowo. Two days later, Mr. Bowo contacted us telling his interest to buy and dedicate Dalam Doaku to his wife. Both Mrs. Mirpuri and me indeed have auctioned that piece in the concert to raise more money to be donated. Mr. Fauzi Bowo offered a really generous sum of money out of his own pocket, much higher than the price that was orientated by us during the concert. Now, in the published score of Dalam Doaku these words will be written above the title : a gift to Mrs. Sri Hartati Fauzi Bowo from Mr. Fauzi Bowo, the new governor of Jakarta.
That song, together with 24 other songs of mine based on poems by Indonesian writers, will be published on January 1st. The launching will be, obviously, during the Jakarta New Year Concert.
If you wanna listen to Dalam Doaku, just check out http://www.youtube.com/ and search for Ananda Sukarlan Dalam Doaku. Or, just come to the Jakarta New Year Concert where Ars Amatoria will receive its world premiere (Graha Bhakti Budaya, TIM, on the first day of 2008 at 4 p.m) !

My "AIDS song"

Today I met with Farman Purnama, my favorite Indonesian tenor, a beautiful man with a beautiful voice (you can check the truth of this statement in his website http://www.farmanpurnama.com/ ) . We are going to perform my new song, Dalam Sakit (In Sickness), for the Fundraising concert for the AIDS Foundation organized by the Singaporian Ambassador for Indonesia at his place Singapore House on the 16th of this month. Dalam Sakit was commissioned by a philanthropist whose name prefers to remain unknown. He has commissioned some other composers from other countries for the AIDS Foundation, as a tribute for someone he loved who died of AIDS. I dedicate Dalam Sakit to all those who have died of AIDS . Its text is from a deeply moving poem by Sapardi Djoko Damono.
This is in fact my first song written expressively for tenor voice. All my previous songs for male voice were written for baritone. Farman has the kind of voice which I like, not that Italian heavy stuff, but closer to …hmm… perhaps Peter Pears who is another favorite singer of mine. I mean, have you heard the recording of Pears singing Britten’s Serenade ? Its beauty could break all the toughest hearts on earth (ok, perhaps not George Bush’s, I wonder if he's got one to be broken ? ...but he’s got no brains either).
Dalam Sakit will exist in two different versions : for tenor and piano, and for tenor and children’s & male choir as part of my cantata ARS AMATORIA which will be premiered in the New Year’s Concert at Graha Bhakti Budaya, TIM Jakarta, on the 1st of January 2008. It should not be transposed to another kind of voice . After I heard Farman singing it, I am convinced that this is the final version. His wonderful high voice is exactly what I wanted to express in this song.
This song now, even before its premiere on the 16th, has already a nickname : Ananda's Aids song.

Betty and the snakes

Too many things happening lately. The most important was perhaps my first visit to Brisbane, to the Queensland Conservatory of Music. I was invited as a speaker on the panel for the conference about music and its relation to government subsidies and the audience. A classic theme, so to say !
I also gave a solo piano concert there on the 23rd of November , with programs of Australian & Spanish composers : Peter Sculthorpe, Elena Kats Chernin, Betty Beath, Barry Conyngham, Vincent Plush, David del Puerto, Jesus Rueda and Polo Vallejo. The most memorable event is perhaps Betty Beath’s invitation to her beautiful & rustic house at the bank of the river the day after the concert (which also happened to be a historical day for Australia, since the general elections were held and the Labour party won ! Hallelujah ! So, down with the Liberal party after like … what, 20 years or so ?). We had a very nice breakfast in their backgarden before they went to the polls in the afternoon. She lives there with her husband, David Cox, who is an illustrator of children’s books and gave me several books for my daughter. Apparently I am the third Indonesian who visited their house ; the previous two were, (oh, such a small world !) the poets Goenawan Mohamad and Sapardi Djoko Damono ! Betty has set some poems of Goenawan Mohamad to music. She is one of Australia’s prominent composers of today, and I am a huge fan of her music, and have played them in many of my concerts in Europe.

They are beautiful people and such a charming couple, and they love Indonesia. She has written a piece which I played in the concert the previous day, called “Merindu Bali”. Their house is so full of Indonesian things, and they even built a bamboo fence surrounding their house. I felt very much at home there, like in a village in Central Java, you know.
The really scary thing about her house is that it is in the middle of the route for the snakes when they go to the river to have their morning bath. So they receive visits of those beautiful (yikes !) creatures almost every day, and sometimes they even use their bathroom ! It's great to be friendly with nature, but aaaarrghh... imagine entering your bathroom and finding a goddamn SNAKE lying around there !!!

website updated

Now that Chendra Panatan my manager has come back in Jakarta and finished his Master's Degree in London, he has updated my website, so you can check it out : www.anandasukarlan.com . Thanks Chendra !

Rapsodia Nusantara : Jakarta is no. 1

I stayed awake until 5 a.m this morning, finishing, revising and copying my First Rapsodia Nusantara—the first of a collection of Lisztian rhapsodies based on Indonesian folk tunes. In fact the idea of these rhapsodies came from conductor/composer/pianist Yazeed Djamin (1951-2001), with whom I often spoke about the identity of Indonesian classical music in general. The first piece will be premiered by myself in the concert to celebrate the newly elected governor of Jakarta, Fauzi Bowo who is a classical music lover and the dedicatee of the piece. It will also be the obligatory piece for the contestants of the Ananda Sukarlan Award, a piano competition founded by Mrs. Pia Alisjahbana (founder of Femina Group) and Mr. Dedi Panigoro (one of the founders and directors of the petroleum company MEDCO Energi). Besides this piece, I will also require the contestants to play another piece by another Indonesian composer, besides the standard repertory. Rapsodia Nusantara no. 1 is based on two folk tunes from Jakarta, “Kicir-Kicir” and “Jali-Jali.” It is also influenced by the inversion and retrograde techniques of Schoenberg, as well as Salvador Dali’s idea of the transformation of two elements. Like the Liszt rhapsodies, Rapsodia Nusantara (and those that follow) is meant to end a recital with virtuosity and flash. But for this one in particular I concentrate more in the different colours of the piano sounds, although certainly the piece doesn't lack virtuosity. I only enjoy listening to musicians who has a wide palette of sound colours, and that is what I would like to hear from the participants of the AS Award .

The Ananda Sukarlan Award for young pianists (under 26), by the way, will be held in Jakarta on the 24th- 27th of July 2008.