VPRO honours Reinbert de Leeuw

On 8 September next, pianist, composer and conductor Reinbert de Leeuw hopes to turn 75 and this will be celebrated with a range of events. These include a three-day festival dedicated to him in The Hague and Amsterdam at the end of September, and next season he will be the central composer in the NTR Saturday Matinee. In addition, a CD box set of his recordings will appear, and later this year I hope to publish my recently completed biography on Reinbert de Leeuw. Together with producer Aad van Nieuwkerk, I made three broadcasts for VPRO about this nestor of modern music. In them, you can hear his own concert recordings that have not previously appeared on CD and I talk to De Leeuw about the composers concerned. The programmes will be broadcast on Thursday 9, 16 and 23 May, in the Evening concert on Radio 4.

De Leeuw has been a pivotal figure in Dutch musical life for decades and is considered one of the founding fathers of the - now sadly endangered - ensemble culture. Back in the 1960s, he introduced modern composers in his renowned Rondom Series, in which he performed not only as pianist and conductor, but also as moderator. After a performance of the Quatuor pour la fin du temps by Olivier Messiaen in 1973, De Leeuw formed the 'Rondom Quartet', together with violinist Vera Beths, cellist Anner Bijlsma and clarinettist George Pieterson. They played this work all over the world and their recordings are still considered a benchmark for young musicians.

Even while still studying at the Muzieklyceum in Amsterdam, De Leeuw was appointed lecturer in theory at the Royal Conservatory in The Hague. But revealing the deeper secrets of harmony and counterpoint year after year did not suit him, and he soon started playing through scores of composers such as Karlheinz Stockhausen and Charles Ives with students. This gave rise to the Schönberg Ensemble in 1974, which initially focused on music of the so-called 'Second Viennese School' (Arnold Schönberg, Alban Berg and Anton Webern), but soon began to programme more widely. In 2009, it merged into the merged ensemble Asko|Schönberg, of which De Leeuw is still the permanent conductor.

Parliamentary questions

In 1969, together with Louis Andriessen, Misha Mengelberg, Peter Schat and Jan van Vlijmen, he composed the opera Reconstruction, which because of its anti-American tenor led to Parliamentary questions and even a smear campaign in daily newspaper The Telegraph unleashed. As if there were not enough conflicts, later that year De Leeuw et al organised the Nutcracker action, using pinch frogs to disrupt a concert by the Concertgebouw Orchestra and conductor Bernard Haitink. - Drastic aksie was desired, as far too few modern notes sounded.

Throughout his life, De Leeuw has avoided the well-trodden paths. With his ultra-rare performances of Erik Satie's early piano works, he stormed the popular charts in the 1970s. He also championed rebellious tone poets such as Charles Ives, John Cage and Mauricio Kagel, but also forged strong ties with spiritual composers such as Galina Ustvolskaya and Sofia Gubaidoelina. The three programmes cover all these different worlds, so the broadcasts are larded with conversations I had with De Leeuw about the composers and their music. These were filmed by producer Aad van Nieuwkerk and posted on YouTube.

The biography Reinbert de Leeuw: man or melody appeared on 14 March 2014 at Leporello Publishers and received a second edition. You can read all the press about the book at my blog site.