Old or new, classic or modern, minimal or world. Pop. Tonal and atonal.
The Netherlands' greatest artist is dead. Can happen. But can I then also curse heartily? Because Jeroen Willems is irreplaceable. As a journalist, you know the drill: of actors over 60, or of otherwise fragile stature, you have a necrootje ready. If you are well-known and meet the requirements, count on your friends and acquaintances to...
Amsterdam, 26-11-2012 - Last Saturday died Moniek Toebosch (1948-2012), the sparkling multi-artist who startled our country from the 1970s onwards with contrary performances. Some of you may remember her scandalous performance in the 1983 Holland Festival. Toebosch presented the programme 'Attacks of Extremes' live for VPRO television from Theater Carré. After half the Broadcasting Orchestra had quit in protest,...
Since the broadcasting series Vredenburg Friday started six years ago, it has managed to attract an ever-expanding audience. This despite the initially rather inhospitable emergency location on the A2 motorway, whose curse name 'Red Box' has since become a nickname for audiences and musicians alike.
They were almost thrown away: George Tsypin's immense sets for Wagner's Der Ring des Nibelungen. Not because his staging was unsuccessful or would have become obsolete by now, but simply because the storage was too hefty a cost for the Netherlands Opera.
’s Hertogenbosch 9-11-2012 – November Music werd afgelopen woensdag succesvol afgetrapt en focust ook in zijn twintigtse editie op multimedia. Het duo Strijbos & Van Merwijk was er al vaker te gast en kreeg die middag de Prins Bernhardcultuurprijs Noord-Brabant, uitgereikt door voormalig Concertgebouwdirecteur Martijn Sanders. ’s Avonds trok hun voor het Amerikaanse strijkkwartet ETHEL gemaakte multimediaspektakel Cross Avenue veel publiek, de twee voorstellingen van Cloud-Messenger van Fred Momotenko waren zelfs geheel uitverkocht.
The experimental hip-hop / noise band Death Grips plays frothy twang noise. But very exciting, interesting branch noise with paranoid, surreal lyrics. Live, it was a breath of fresh air. In their concert in Bittersweet (presented by Paradiso), vocalist MC Ride (Stefan Burnett) and drummer Zach Hill unleash a 20-minute hurricane of breathtaking fury.
Classical music on television always has something boring about it. Often a short introduction by a neat gentleman or lady, followed by the concert itself. Close-ups of the conductor and soloist, a longshot of the entire orchestra and applause afterwards. As if the medium is trying to emulate concert hall etiquette as scrupulously as possible. Even the webstreams that more and more large orchestras are increasingly turning to barely deviate from this formula.
Amsterdam, 10-10-2012 - Already last summer, the Dutch Chamber Choir (NKK) through our country, working with amateur choirs at surprise station concerts to draw the general public's attention to its seventy-fifth anniversary. In the coming weeks, this anniversary will be celebrated with a series of concerts in seven different cities, under the recruiting title 'A tradition of renewal'.
Amsterdam, 8 October 2012 During the well-attended Classical Music Day at the Muziekgebouw aan 't IJ the prize winners of the competition for women composers were announced this afternoon. The day was organised for the 11th time by Music centre Netherlands (MCN), which will cease to exist on 1 January. Thanks to an anonymous bequest, explicitly intended for women composers, three prizes could be awarded.
The closing applause after the premiere of Götterdämmerung stormy, is an understatement. It seemed as if the completely sold-out auditorium wanted to surpass the primal forces extracted from the Gelders Orkest by Ed Spanjaard. History was made here: on stage, by the soloists and choir, in the orchestra pit and behind the scenes, for six hours and 20 minutes.
It is the first mass scene in Wagner's Ring: Siegfried leads Brünnhilde to the Gibichungenburg and Hagen summons all his men. From the side stage there is literally a deafening blare of horns, but conductor Ed Spanjaard allows the play to continue. And rightly so: the orchestra has a spark. The whole stage is filled in an instant and the choir swells in strength, louder and louder, ever louder, until the ecstatic apotheosis:
No fewer than eight collections of arias, cantatas, duets and sacred works were published by Barbara Strozzi (1619-1677). She enjoyed great prestige in the Accademia degli unisoni founded by her father, and lived off her compositions.
"That fairytale world has never been my world," director Ivo van Hove declared before the premiere of Schreker's fairytale opera Der Schatzgräber. Remarkable, as Van Hove and his regular scenographer Jan Versweyveld were previously responsible at De Nederlandse Opera for Tchaikovsky's Iolanta and Janáček's The Makropulos case - also fairy tales rather than grand dramatic works.
The Netherlands Opera opens the season with a rarely performed opera by Franz Schreker, which mixes pagan and Christian themes. The brilliant music is countered by the chilly direction, preventing identification with the characters.
It begins beautifully. Prominently displayed on stage is Breitner's painting The Red Kimono. And not a copy, but the real thing, which is further underlined by the Stedelijk Museum's large number of crates, on which the musicians of the Hexagon Ensemble are also placed. Actor and dancer Michael Schumacher casually walks up to it and looks at the painting for about a minute - the average time a museum visitor looks at a painting.
That Pierre Audi does not shy away from religious symbolism is well known, but the true miracle in The Netherlands Opera's Parsifal is in the pit. There, in the hands of master conductor Iván Fischer, the Concertgebouw Orchestra sets a new Wagner standard. Despite a gigantic orchestral strength, almost chamber music-like lightness, extraordinarily transparent and, thanks to careful tempo choices, with wonderful dramatic tension. Five hours long.
Or: the familiar becomes utterly alien here. Or: embracing meaninglessness as the first principle. One hundred years after his birth, John Cage takes centre stage in HF weekend.
Ever since Reinbert de Leeuw played it in the fastest talk show on Dutch television, John Cage's 4'33" has been a well-known composition in our country. For exactly four minutes and thirty-three seconds, the musician does not play a single note and the audience hears nothing but the ambient sounds.
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 ...
Een klassieke fout: Andries Knevel omschrijft Richard Wagner als de hofcomponist van Hitler. En wordt door niemand tegengesproken.
To bring in an extra five tonnes, the Netherlands Symphony Orchestra and the Gelderland Orchestra are pulling together. And with success: the provincial governments of Overijssel and Gelderland are absorbing the state's subsidy cut. However, it now turns out that the plans used to rake in that bailout are dubious. Politicians have hardly looked into it. Questions about the business plan came mainly from the PVV in Overijssel, but in Gelderland that same party enthusiastically agreed to the injection of millions after a - remarkably damning - counter-expertise.
Nearly thirteen million The Gelderland Orchestra (HGO) asked for the province of Gelderland. It got three-and-a-half. Just enough to absorb the reduction in the state subsidy for the next two years and to work towards a new organisational structure and a new revenue model, as described in a very ambitious business plan, which...... wait a minute. We have already written about this, haven't we?
We already wrote extensively about the name change of the Orchestra of the East in the Netherlands Symphony Orchestra (NSO). The curious opera grant application based on a business plan that carries huge risks had our full attention. Regular partner the National Travel Opera was not amused.
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.
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