The One With The Concerts

The first concert of Krashna Musika was in Maria van Jessekerk, Delft; and the second concert was in Dr. Anton Philipzaal, Den Haag. Guys were asked to wear black suit, white shirt, and a black bowtie or a gray Krashna bowtie. Fortunately I brought my black suits with me from Indonesia. Yoben lent me his extra Krashna bowtie.

The warm up started a bit late from the actual plan of 17.45. After warm up, we had dinner. We had to bring it or buy it from surrounding shops, haha. It's different from our concerts in Indonesia.

In Indonesia, we are used to have committee to prepare the dinners so that everybody will surely have his/her dinner before the concert and keep them in the concert venue. It's hard to gather a bunch of people on time in Indonesia. Well, people can argue that it depends on the person. But as committee for the concert, someone would like to keep them in the same place. It's also done that way in the hope that singers can focus on their performance better (well, hoping is not a sin :D).

Here, I find people should be more responsible for him/herself due to too few people in the committee to take care of that. Ga ada manja2an deh.. Bagus juga, soalnya emang menyebalkan klo harus ngurusin orang2 sok ngartis, hahaha.

This characteristic also happened for choir's blocking. Singers position was not arranged. I had to find a good place for myself (i.e. I could see the conductor without being blocked by a tall Soprano or Tenor before me :p). Well, this was understandable for such a big choir. We had approximately 150 musicians in the concert (one of the committee told me this), with 100 people as singers I think. However for a smaller choir, I prefer the conductor to arrange the position for better sound. Pssst.. Di hari kedua konser, aku sengaja kabur dari posisiku di kanan panggung (pas Gladi Resik) ke posisi tengah (pas konsernya) karena tenor2 di sampingku sering kali lip-sync doang(ato diam aja).. Alhasil suaraku terlalu menonjol sendirian di lokasi itu. Untuk hari pertama, lokasiku sih oke.

For the whole concert itself, I'm quite satisfied. The first session was the orchestra performance. They did well. Although the choir could see the percussion section dropped one of the instrument that made unexpected noise, hahaha.

We performed with the orchestra on the second session. Some friends said the sound was impressive (thanks to the Church interior design and the number of the performers, I think :D). I'm not happy with the last part of Movement 3. The polyphony sounded messy. Actually most of the song couldn't be said tidy being heard from singers position, but it's insignificant for the audience. The dynamic range was not very wide, but it's still alright. The Baritone Soloist was great and I really really loved the voice of the Soprano Soloist :D

We got several minutes of standing ovation at the end of both concerts. I have checked with my Dutch friends whether it's a formal thing to do after a concert in Netherlands :D Well, they said it's not. So, I hope the audience was actually satisfied with our performances :)

PS: I spent 1,5 hours learning how to tie a bowtie from Youtube and some other websites one night before the concert, hehehe.