Steffen Schleiermacher – Asia Piano Avantgarde: Indonesia (2005)

On this 2005 MDG Scene release, pianist Steffen Schleiermacher presents seven works by five important Indonesian composers, though under the slightly misleading album title of Asia Piano Avantgarde. From its date of composition and erratic gestures, one may readily accept Paul Gutama Soegijo's Klavierstudie (1968) as an example of the late avant-garde's pointillistic and fragmentary keyboard style. But the remaining pieces on the program are much less gestural and disjointed, and rather more even in tone, smooth in technique, and almost meditative in feeling. Slamet A. Sjukur's Svara (1979) and Yu Taha (1997) are spare and austere, though the harmonic language is paradoxically rich in thirds, sixths, and octaves, and the music at times seems almost Impressionistic in its veiled quality. Michael Asmara's two short selections, A Piece for Piano No. 10 (2001) and A Little Piece for Pianoforte (undated) are quite concentrated in their serial content, though the effect of both pieces is calm and contemplative, somewhat reminiscent of Morton Feldman's subdued piano music. The soft pitches and long-held silences of Soe Tjen Marching's Kenang (2001) are even more like Feldman, and the fairly static harmonic structures and repetitive motives of Dody Satya Ekagustiman's Langendria (1997) may also bring Olivier Messiaen to mind. Yet the quiet ambience and poetic mood of this album make it seem less like experimental music and more reflective of the homogenization of styles that came at the end of the twentieth century, which still seems a dominant factor in the early twenty-first. Schleiermacher, as a product of the avant-garde of the late '70s and early '80s, may read into these contemporary works some hopeful signs of a new movement, but what appears instead to be the case is a consolidation of past gains, not an exploration of new possibilities. That said, Schleiermacher's sympathetic performances are evocative and atmospheric, and MDG's unprocessed sound is clean and natural, so these composers and their music are at least presented well, even if they aren't accurately represented as a vanguard.