It is not usual, but it must be said: the Amsterdam Symfonietta is a tremendously beautiful ensemble. The musicians all look beautiful, they handle their instruments beautifully and they play beautifully. They look alert, active. That helps with being liked, we all know, and that active look is down to their formula: they usually play without a conductor and so have to be incredibly attentive to what is going on around them. Looking dully at the conductor makes you ugly.
The Dessner brothers (Aaron and Bryce), best known for their world-class band The National, stood out a little faintly against all that beautifully packaged beauty in their indiepop outfit of jacket and jeans. Perhaps also because they were looking very much at the conductor.
On 16 June 2012, this striking combo was one of the big draws at the Holland Festival, in a concert that saw the world premiere of two pieces by Bryce Dessner, surrounding the world premiere of a piece by that other great of exceptional pop music: Radiohead's Jonny Greenwood.
Jonny Greenwood himself unfortunately did not attend the premiere of his 'There Will Be Blood-Suite'. He was preparing for a performance in Toronto, which, however, did not go ahead because the stage collapsed there, resulting in casualties among the audience, about the same time as the premiere of that play. Tragic coincidence. It added even more charge to the world premiere of his suite afterwards.
That play, written for the famous film 'There Will be Blood' from 2007, incidentally, was also immediately the highlight of the evening. Ominous and icy from first to last note, and yet also steeped in the alienating romantic lyricism that characterises Radiohead's music.
The opening piece of the evening, a new work by the classically trained Bryce Dessner, was promising, although I tend to find the 'drone' that also characterised this piece already a touch dated. It worked, though, because the combination of classical schooling and rock mentality makes for fascinating music anyway.
However, the piece Raphael, which he wrote in 2007, was much better. Less daring perhaps, but exciting and at times compelling, it was a perfect piece for the Amsterdam Symfonietta playing without a conductor.
More importantly, they played without the Dessner brothers' guitars. After all, those guitars are a problem. Or the problem, as was evident at the closing performance of the evening, the European premiere of St Carolyn by the Sea, a double concerto for guitar. Two thirds of that work was actually unlistenable, precisely because of the flat and harsh sound of the Dessners' electric guitars, which in no way matched the spatial layering of the Amsterdam Symfonietta's sound. Somewhere in the middle, that problem fell away, when quotes came along from the work of John Dowland, the composer who - the only one according to Bryce Dessner - really wrote for guitar. The purely percussive use of the guitars in that middle section was even swinging at times.
Still, it remains a fascinating combo: pop music and classical concert practice. Love is possible. At the final applause, the clearly hugely relieved Bryce Dessner did not know how many times to kiss Candida Thompson, orchestra master of this extraordinary orchestra.
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