MUSIC
Old or new, classic or modern, minimal or world. Pop. Tonal and atonal.
Micha Hamel's Requiem is beautifully spatial but lacks substantive urgency #hf12
In his Requiem for tenor, narrator and ensemble, Micha Hamel makes the most of the space of Amsterdam's De Duif church. Musicians play on the altar, from the balconies, mingle among the audience and push out a piano. - But what does Hamel really want to say? In front of a sold-out house, Micha Hamel's Requiem premiered last night. He ...
Knevel calls Wagner Hitler's court composer. And no one says anything.
A classic mistake: Andries Knevel describes Richard Wagner as Hitler's court composer. And is not contradicted by anyone.
Ambitions City Promotion made Grenswerk hopeless.
Festival Grenswerk was told on Tuesday 21 February that it must stop after three successful years because it does not match the ambitions of Stichting Enschede Promotie. The festival set up in 2009 was given a thick set of demands by the alderman that it could not meet after a scathing report by this revamped VVV.
'Ajax states' in sudden war between Netherlands Symphony Orchestra and National Travel Opera
This week, the National Travel Opera begins rehearsals of Mozart's Le nozze di figaro. In the bin, the brand-new Netherlands Symphony Orchestra conducted by Jan Willem de Vriend. Business as usual, as both companies have been working closely together for years and are united in the National Music Quarter Enschede. Only: orchestra and opera company have not been talking to each other since last week.
"Battle of the Orchestras" kicks off with name change Orchestra of the East Netherlands Symphony Orchestra
The Netherlands has a new orchestra: the Netherlands Symphony Orchestra. At least, new in name. The Orkest van het Oosten does not seem to be waiting for possible forced mergers, and is already claiming its position as the national orchestra outside the Randstad by means of this striking name change that was announced today before the start of a concert with the Jussen brothers.
Letter Zijlstra is just a request for information. But it does include a tickable invitation to suicide
Has state secretary Halbe Zijlstra the Lower House lied or misled in June when he stated that rushing through the culture cuts was necessary to absorb friction costs? Or does it just turn out to be improper governance?
Siegfried at Reisopera: a sword is a sword, a spear a spear and a dragon an er... storage tank with claws
The dragon remains tricky. Truly terrifying you never get him, of course, but what looked like a cross between a storage tank and an underground tube was laughable even before kitchy claws emerged from the wall. No wonder young Siegfried had the forchten does not learn and stands there smiling.
Wagner premiere: mangled Lohengrin kind of straight out of Wagner temple in Bayreuth
"Kinder!, macht Neues!, Neues!, und abermals Neues!" wrote Wagner to Franz Lizt. And after the very first Festival, he concluded that next year everything had to be different. Even an entirely new theatre he did not consider out of the question.
#HF11 Thomas Adès sails his own ship and steers across familiar waters with new compositions
The ark as the earth, as a spaceship carrying us through the chaos of the universe to a safe haven. The pole star as the apparent magnetic centre of the universe around which all the stars revolve. No, this is not woolly new age chatter, these are the starting points for Tevot and Polaris, two major orchestral works by Thomas Adès, which had their Dutch premiere under the composer's own direction.
#HF11 Playing with Nietzsche's moustache in opera fantasy by Wolfgang Rihm
An opera based on texts by Nietzsche, and then start with loud laughter and main character N trying to catch two water nymphs. Wait a minute, that's Wagner! Well, at Wagner's Rheingold involves three Rhine daughters, but the similarity is too great to be coincidental. And neither is this one, but in the first minutes of Wolfgang Rihm's Dionysos is much more going on. Here is a composer at work who not only plays with text and music, but also with centuries of cultural history and knows how to add jokes to it. It is to get intoxicated.
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