18/04/2019
about this book,
These are three works for piano and orchestra that were written in 3 different time periods, but when I compiled them for this publication, I realized there is this one theme recurring in my mind that unites all these 3 works: surrealism. Not that surrealism of Salvador Dali or Magritte, but more about something which is unreal but based on reality. These works could be played as a whole, with the order as published in this book, or each could be performed separately (or even a combination of two of them). If all three are performed as a whole, the title "Three Fantasies for piano & orchestra" I consider quite appropriate for it.
1. "Wagner's Restless Nights" was commissioned by the Indonesian Opera Society, with a special request that it should be connected with something operatic. I then took potent fragments of Wagner's Ride of the Valkyries and Tannhauser and process them in the unique black box of my own transformative musical language. It pays homage to the electric vitality of Wagner’s intensely physical, expressive world while constructing my own unpredictable musical forms that alternate between moments of delicate lyricism and hard driven, virtuoso brio. I decided to call it Wagner's Restless Nights and it is was premiered in IOS's annual Opera Gala, sponsored by CIMB Niaga Bank, in September 2013, by the French pianist Frédéric D'Oria- Nicolas, and I conducted it with my orchestra. I imagined how the brain of Wagner were full of his themes hanging and crossing with each other inside. Not only the melodies are juxtaposing, the moods are as well, so sometimes one can't really understand the mood of a certain passage (typical of me with Asperger's Syndrome!).
2. Interlude from "Erstwhile" (notes from my blog andystarblogger.blogspot.com )
"He Hath Made Everything Beautiful in its time" -- Ecclesiastes 3 : 11 . Indeed. Even if it takes days, months, years .. and now I see it can happen even in centuries! That is the essence of the book that inspired me so much to write the music. In fact, the inspiration is so powerful that I would let my work now as a "work in progress" for the rest of my life. For the time being, I just concentrate for its premiere and recording which will be just short excerpts of the whole book.
The book, and therefore my music, bears the title Erstwhile, A Communion of Time. The book is clear, what is not clear is my music. Is it a lyrical symphony, such as Gustav Mahler's "Das Lied von der Erde"? Is it an opera? Is it a cantata? I might say, in the long run, it is an opera, but for now, let's call it a symphony. I mentioned Mahler's work since Erstwhile will also have that dubious hybrid of half song-cycle half symphony, and in fact in my case it is also an opera. And it deals with the same issues of Mahler's work: pain, loss, love, life, parting and salvation. But Erstwhile was written by Rio Haminoto, a 21st century writer who happens, like me, to be a Trekkie (Star Trek fan, if you still don't know that word) and so the story spans for 7 centuries, which doesn't differ much from Mahler's last few painful years of his life if you believe that time is just the 4th dimension of space.
3. Fons Juventatis
The whole human life and psychology is focused on two things: the fear of death as our primal terror, and the longing for immortality, a yearning to live forever. I have touched this issue briefly in my first piece for piano and orchestra, a 5-minute work called Fons Juventatis, or The Fountain of Youth in 2011. I didn't write it just for fun. It was a happy piece, of course, depicting the spirit of eternal youth (besides the fact that it was written as a birthday present for my friend Erza S.T., the founder of Indonesia Opera Society), but it was also the thing I, and I'm sure we all, painfully yearn. From this yearning for forever, this hurtful sense of passing time, springs most of humanity's greatest achievements, in art, music, literature and architecture. Paradoxically, it is the very awareness that life is fleeting on the wings of time that directs human activity towards the creation of artistic products that possess the durability their creators lack, images in carved stones and marbles and later in paintings and photographs, words in literature, beauty woven in sounds, ideas captured in books and films. Most of civilization is a by-product of the quest of immortality. Mahler's 9 great symphonies and Shakespeare's dramas serve exactly the same purpose as the Pharaoh's pyramides of 5000 years ago.
But on the other hand, have you seen the film "Highlander" and its fantastic soundtrack by Queen, "Who wants to live forever"? The reason we fear death, as much as we yearn for immortality, is love. We fear the loss of our loved ones, there is no use being immortal if we couldn't share it with our loved ones. As the Vulcans always say, "Live long, and prosper". Just a long life is not enough.
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