So it wasn't really that long ago that a world-famous composer could tell his 20-year-old lover to stop composing because he couldn't stand competition. And for her to do just that. It is a detail in the history of Gustav and Alma Mahler, long known to insiders, but which...
Anno 2020, Music Week is buzzing like never before. Even corona has barely caught on. How many 'Mozarts' have emerged by now I will leave open, but the rich and varied off- and online offerings create some choice stress. At 75, the organisation is younger than ever: Gaudeamus is the place to be.
In 1920, Erich Wolfgang Korngold experienced triumphs with his psychological opera Die tote Stadt. The work was performed in more than eighty cities at the time, with unanimous critical acclaim. The opera then disappeared from the stage for a long time but is nowadays performed again sparsely. So it is good that the Nederlandse Reisopera is bringing this almost forgotten piece back to the stage....
At the end of the nineteenth century, Western music gradually began to come apart at the seams. Composers used more and more dissonances so that the familiar tonality hardly fitted into its shell. From a constant desire for even more expression, the orchestra was expanded with ever-newer instruments. This led to monster productions such as Gustav Mahler's 'Symphony of the Tausend', with more than a thousand...
The plofnies came totally unexpectedly. The family father behind me, out with wife and presumably reluctant adolescent son, burst out after about 10 minutes into the performance. Just when a deafening silence had descended over the sold-out Theatre Carré. At least four people, including myself, were shocked to the core. A sneeze had never been this loud before, but as quiet as during...
Some 25 years ago, 10 musicians got together in Innervillgraten. A hamlet in East Tyrol, to play funeral marches. A band formed: Franui. By making quirky arrangements of music such as by Schubert and Mahler, Franui gained international success. At the 2017 Holland Festival, they will perform a programme of music about life and impermanence. In collaboration with baritone Florian...
Arnold Schoenberg (1874-1951) is often accused of driving audiences out of the hall with his drive for innovation. After all, his twelve-tone system swept away the foundations of tonality, which had provided listeners with a safe haven for centuries. Deprived of its foothold, it would have turned its back on contemporary music forever. Nonsense, because not only did Schoenberg write fantastic works, but also...
Go ahead and express Nietzsche's book Also sprach Zarathustra in dance. But Brazilian choreographer Samir Calixto can do it. By focusing on a poem from the complex book: the Song of Midnight. This is immediately the reason for the title M: Midnight. Or Mensch, or Myth. Or Mahler. Or Metaphysical. You...
Mahler on a programme by Asko|Schönberg - the face of avant-garde atonality, is that possible? For regular guest conductor Etienne Siebens, this is no question: in his programmes, he likes to explore the boundaries between beloved classics and composers still alive. On Thursday, 4 February, he places the ensemble version of Mahler's romantically singing Fourth Symphony - performed with...
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?
Russian conductor Valeri Gergjev was back in Rotterdam for a while, for one concert. He conducted his own orchestra, the London Symphony Orchestra (LSO), in de Doelen. The famous orchestra played repertoire that we in our country know inside out: Gustav Mahler's 1st symphony and Dmitri Shostakovich's 1st piano concerto. A now historic combination: because the Netherlands has become fused...
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