Holland Festival
They are gentlemen of age and therefore with a history. Grey or bespectacled or bald - or with a combination of all three. Their music has taken them everywhere. And now they are in a packed Carre: the Orchestre El Gusto. To their own delight, as they thank the audience for coming. The musicians from the kasbah of Algiers play the music as it is
With Tragedy of a Friendship commemorates Flanders Opera the bicentenary of Richard Wagner's birth. It is a production by controversial artist Jan Fabre, author Stefan Hertmans and composer Moritz Eggert. When I approach the German tone poet to talk about this opera, he reacts with shock: there is ab-so-lutely no question of an opera! Could I please clear up this misunderstanding once and for all?
Dance and music belong together. Yet there is always something new to discover in this combination. The Amsterdam Cello Biennale invited dance group LeineRoebana to create a dance and music performance with cellist Jakob Koranyi and CvA Percussion to music by composer Tan Dun: 'Snow in June'. In recent years, LeineRoebana has shown like no other group how enriching unconventional combinations between dance and music can be.
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.
Shara Worden bounces lithely across the Bimhuis stage, dressed in a weird, multicoloured fairy outfit with plush balls. And she sings the stars from heaven, with insane timing and agility. Her heavenly voice seems to dance with amazing dynamics. From frighteningly subtle and rarefied, from warm and deeply resonant to shuddering high notes at hurricane force. She...
For another 15 years, the Delft Chamber Music Festival, so named to reflect its international character, has encompassed 15 years. Violinist Isabelle van Keulen handled the chamber music festival's programming for the first ten years, Lisa Ferschtmann - also a violinist - took over from her five years ago. But even this already successful festival fears the upcoming budget cuts. A pity, because what...
With the battle between Titans and gods on Mount Olympus, Xenakis opens 1234, a mini-festival in the great Holland Festival. In four concerts, spread over two days, it features Iannis Xenakis central. There is also an extensive exhibition dedicated to the Greek composer, who was a mathematician and architect by birth.
I am not a connoisseur of the performance practice of Bach's St John Passion and know that other piece, the St Matthew Passion, mainly from a few TV excerpts and far-flung arrangements like the one by Platel's Pitié. So don't expect me to pass judgment on how good the version, which was seen and heard at the Concertgebouw on 5 April 2011, was, comparatively...
By Willem Jan Keizer
Rotterdam - The fifteenth edition of the Gergjev Festival officially kicked off Friday evening in the presence of Her Majesty the Queen in concert hall de Doelen with a concert by the Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Valeri Gergjev. Although the festival takes place at some 20 locations in the city - not only in de Doelen but also in the Laurenskerk, the conservatory, museum Boijmans van Beuningen and numerous other unexpected locations - the festival is virtually invisible in the city.
Sometimes we are not at a concert or performance ourselves, but there is a spectator who dedicates a beautiful or critical reflection on a performance in more than a few sentences. You may submit those pieces, and if they are deemed good enough, we will repost them on The Dodo. With our heartfelt thanks, of course. Mail your pieces to: dedodo@cultureelpersbureau.nl...
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