Sunday, May 6, 2012

De Drie Baritons, incredible voice from Netherland


Frankly, I haven’t heard anything about them before I saw their ticket in my friend’s facebook. However, I decided to watch their performance. Actually, another reason for me is the place where they were going to perform is an old building with thousands of creepy stories, Lawang Sewu or a thousand Door-Building.  Its strategic place in the heart of the town is just within distance to my house. So, what else could stop me from watching it?

After getting the ticket in Widya Mitra, a place offering Dutch course, my niece, a friend and I went to Lawang Sewu. The stage was simple completed with spotlight located in front of some rows of seats for audience. My first expectation was this concert would be accompanied by a team of orchestra players, but, what I got was just a stage with 3 microphones and 2 seats. So, where would the instruments be placed? Ika, a friend of mine takes violin course recently, so she expected to see some violinists playing on the stage. She would take the energy from them as her motivation. But?


Sunday, April 15, 2012. at 7.30 PM, the MC opened the concert. I thought, since the performers are from Netherland, and Widya Mitra as a Dutch course, the concert would be held in Dutch. Moreover, I heard some audience speaking Dutch that really made me lost. Thanks God, that the MC spoke in Bahasa and de Drie Baritons singers greeted us in English. Yay, I was not lost anymore. My curiosity about the instrument finally got its answer: they used playback for the concert. Owh, I see.


In the entrance, we got the list of songs they were going to perform. From the list, I tried to recognize some of them that I might be familiar with. I found only few, Perhaps Love, Sway, To All The Girls I love Before while some others I might have known but the text seemed incorrectly typed. The titles I mentioned before were songs I listened once in a while. I was quite not sure since the songs I knew are not opera songs. That made me even more curious.

As soon as de Drie Baritons were on stage, they greeted in Bahasa, Selamat Malam (Good evening). They expressed how happy they were being invited in Indonesia, particularly in Semarang. The first song was Italiaans medley. Listening to their voice made me out of breath. Fyi, I’ve never been in such concert before. Their voice, song, and the place that has European architecture really did a great spell on me. I almost forgot to take a breath. Lol.


The following songs they performed still made the audience out their breath. Some distractions happened, though. The microphone sometimes went on and off. One of the singers made a joke that the building has a lot of creepy stories. And the ‘dwellers’ were distracting them. Lol. Thanks God, the distraction only happened when they talked to each other and to audience. Oya, they expressed among others admiration before they met and set up a group.

Some pop songs like Perhaps Love, To All The Girls I love Before were performed in half pop and half opera. How about Sway, the swing jazzy song? They even danced along the song. Wow…  the last two songs were written You’ll Never and Amigos in the text. I did expect that the two songs were songs I’m familiar with. Before they were about to say goodbye, they performed the songs I was curious about. And……….. wow…. They performed You’ll Never Walk Alone, a song with a lot of versions. And another last..last song….. my heart fell when they sang Amigos Para Siempre (Friends for Life). No one could sit still but gave them a standing ovation…


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I went home, feeling satisfied and looked for another free classical concert. 


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