This same spirit is what the CCF (French Cultural Center) Jakarta has brought to the tropical Indonesia, through their annual program themed Printemps Français (Spring in France). According to Mr. Patrick Perez, Director of CCF Jakarta, the program’s main purpose is to introduce French culture through its warm spring to Indonesia.
This year, the program included Michael Cousteau, one of France’s best conductors. On Thursday,
June 10, 2010, in Balai Sarbini Jakarta, Michael performed with the Nusantara Symphony Orchestra (NSO), bringing the theme “A French Tribute to The Young Audience”.
The concert featured four works: Symphony No. 4 in C Minor from Henri-Joseph Rigel, Nyi Ronggeng from Yazeed Djamin, Petite Suite from Claude Debussy, and Peter and the Wolf from Sergei Prokofiev.
The concert started at 8 p.m. with great anticipation from the public, showed by completely filled seats
of the hall. As Michael lifted his baton to start the first piece, it was evident that a French aroma was in the air.
Rigel is a composer who worked in Paris in the late 18th century, thus predating the romantic era.
Rigels’ work started with a fanfare and had a generally harmonious spirit, played beautifully the entire time.
“This type of music is very easy to play for Indonesians” says Michael in a short interview before the show.
“Indonesian people, maybe because of the expressive nature of the language, like to play music that is articulate, harmonious and fast-paced”.
The second performance, though, attracted much more attention. The composition Nyi Ronggeng is a work by Yazeed Djamin (1950–2001), a renowned Indonesian pianist and composer.
In this work, he portrays the life of a ronggeng dancer of West Java, where most traditional dances
are folk dances enjoyed by peasants after a hard day’s night at the rice paddies.
Ronggeng dancers are pretty girls who travel and perform from village to village, often falling into the trap of eroticism, until they are no longer young and settle down unwillingly.
The work consists of four movements, accompanied by the rhythm of kendang, a traditional Sundanese drum, by Jalu Gatot Pratidina.
It was amazing to see two kinds of music, from very different backgrounds, playing in synergy to present a unique harmony.
Michael Cousteau understood the music deeply, as his baton controlled the pace of both.
The composition reminded one of a 1950s movie soundtrack, typically strong in percussion and strings.
The most unique part was the third movement, which portrayed the dilemma of a beautiful ronggeng dancer at the peak of her fame. Brass and string, accompanied by percussion, played alternately with strong, bold movements.
Later on, the orchestra stopped to show a real ronggeng dance, performed beautifully by Gita Novia Sofyan in brilliant red and blue kebaya (sundanese dress).
The audience was mesmerized by Gita’s movement and the music, as she flashed her selendang (scarf) vigorously. The applause grew louder when Gita put her selendang around Michael’s shoulders, asking him to dance along as if Michael was a Sundanese farmer.
After the intermission, Michael presented the audience with a different version of dance, Debussy’s Petite Suite. Michael defines Debussy as “intellectual, with an emphasis more on the touch of fingertips rather than movement of a whole hand”.
The last part, The Ballet, featured pure dancing in the literal sense of its title, bringing the audience into a world of graceful movements with a delicate violin and woodwind performance.
After Nyi Ronggeng, Peter and The Wolf, a composition written in 1934 when Prokofiev took the challenge of writing music for children to promote music at an early age, was performed. The narrator Rangga Bhuana happened to be the son of Indonesian theatre-master N. Riantiarno.
His theatrical skill came to life when he told the story of Peter.
The audience was welded to their seats like little children, as he described how Peter dropped down from a tree and captured the tail of the bad wolf, accompanied by strings and brass that personify both characters.
The NSO and Michael Cousteau provided a breath of fresh air to those normally put off by classical music become of its apparent inaccessibility.
The children in the audience enjoyed the play so much that they sat on the stairs quietly as Rangga and the NSO told the story of Peter.
Seeing children amazed by this type of entertainment, among the many false portrayals of life presented by today’s soap operas, should make NSO and the CCF proud. There is still good entertainment out there.
Source: The Jakarta Post
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