The end of the year is approaching. So the lists fly around our ears again with 'most beautiful', 'best', 'most unforgettable', 'most moving'... fill in the blanks. I think compiling top-soaps is actually a typically male thing, but I'm not that bad. Here are three CDs you wouldn't have wanted to miss this year - in no particular order. Louise Farrenc: Variations for Piano Biliana Tzinlikova,...
We're sitting in the opera house; We're waiting for the curtain to arise With wonders for our eyes; We're feeling pretty gay, [...] A feeling of expectancy, A certain kind of ecstasy, Expectancy and ecstasy... Sh's's's's. "Curtain!" With the above words, Charles Ives sang of the excitement of a child going to the opera for the first time. A similar enthusiasm shows...
Actually, Sergei Rachmaninov (1873-1943) was a bit of an oddity, an anachronism. He bit into the composition style of his great example Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, who died in 1893. When contrasting Rachmaninov with some of his contemporaries (Dmitri Shostakowich, Sergei Prokofiev, Igor Strawinsky and overseas Charles Ives, George Antheil and Edgard Varèse), it is only right to notice...
There was once a celebrity (pianist, composer and conductor Reinbert de Leeuw), a biographer (Thea Derks) and a riot. De Leeuw was against the publication of his biography Reinbert de Leeuw: man or melody and made no secret of it. In the TV programme Zomergasten (Summer guests), he even dismissed the dissertation-like standard work as an almost endearing puff piece. Meanwhile...
After years of concerts in the 'Red Box' on the A2, AVROTROS' De Vrijdag van Vredenburg on Radio 4 returned to the centre of Utrecht last summer. The new TivoliVredenburg was built entirely around Vredenburg's former Great Hall, renowned worldwide for its fabulous acoustics. Many a tear was shed at the reopening. To a new hall belongs...
For seven years, Thea Derks worked on her biography of Reinbert de Leeuw. And it did not go unnoticed. Except for the reaction of the person portrayed, unanimously rave reviews and soon a second printing. Rightly so, because the book offers an indispensable description of modern music in the Netherlands, with many composer portraits and an understandable leading role for Reinbert de Leeuw.
In just over two weeks, the NJO Music Summer, with more than sixty-five concerts performed by young musicians, spread across more and less obvious locations in the province of Gelderland. One hundred and sixty young people flocked from all over the world to show their skills from 1 to 17 August. Anyone staying in Gelderland at that time could not possibly miss their presence.
Reinbert de Leeuw turned seventy-five last September, but already in May the VPRO honoured him with three full-length broadcasts on Radio 4. Together with Aad van Nieuwkerk, I made a selection from his best recordings of Kagel, Ustvolskaya and Louis Andriessen, among others, about which I also let him speak. This was followed in September by a real Reinbert festival and his own magazine. The magazine not only highlighted him...
This month, Reinbert de Leeuw celebrates his seventy-fifth birthday. Not only do television, radio, internet media and written press devote extensive attention to the no small achievements of this champion of contemporary music, but he is also being honoured with his own festival, 'Reinbert 75'. This will be organised
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
We live in destructive times. Nature, art and culture, the inner life: they are breaking down under the tyranny of money, commerce and efficiency. Emio Greco and Pieter C. Scholten take a stand against this. Addio alla fine is an all-in experience in the form of a boat trip to an unknown place, where the audience is immersed in dance, music and...
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