Jubilation and cheers echoed last night in the sold-out Great Hall of the Muziekgebouw aan 't IJ after the Dutch premiere of Delusion of the Fury of Harry Partch at the Holland Festival. No wonder, as the performance directed by Heiner Goebbels was titillating and the performance by the - conductorless - MusikFabrik perfect.
Even before the Holland Festival had begun properly, all tickets for the three performances of Handel's Orlando sold. What a crisis. However, it is not hard to guess why.
The Holland Festival presents Abel Gance's restored film epic on Sunday Napoleon, with live orchestra. A rare event, for the first time in this form on mainland Europe. In 1927, Gance had performed with Napoleon delivered a groundbreaking and monumental piece of work that made unusual demands on the projection (three canvases) and went out into the world in a variety of severely shortened versions after the first performances.
Napoleon at Ziggo Dome promises to be spectacular, but who was That ambitious loner Abel Gance?
Dutch museums do not pay for the art they present. Cable companies stick money from writers in their own pockets. Spreading new journalism platforms without permission and without paying the work of small independents. Libraries are closing, and are being replaced by private libraries or school libraries.
Like many of my contemporaries, I have played Jeff Buckley's CDs grey, but know next to nothing about Pakistani Sufi music. Except that it's great. And that Abida Parveen is the queen of that genre. Tonight, this Voice of God and her ensemble are on stage at the National Opera & Ballet.
Jiří Kylián is not at the Holland Festival. He has his own festival. The small Korzo theatre hosted ten days of intimate works by the great choreographer. Varied and still impressive. Next year, Kylián will have been a choreographer for 45 years. How do you keep performing at the world's top for so long?
It seems like a statement, opening the latest Holland Festival under Pierre Audi's direction with 'Vortex Temporum'. The collaboration between the two top Belgian ensembles Rosas and Ictus does everything that is scarce in the present day.
The Valley of Astonishment. Titles don't come much prettier than that of 'The Valley of Astonishment'. Theatre legend Peter Brook's tentative last play is coming to Amsterdam. The Holland Festival gave me and two journalists from Parool and NRC, respectively, the opportunity to talk to the already legendary director when he was alive. Pretty special, because the man who enchanted an entire generation of theatre-makers and audiences with performances such as the nine-hour Mahabharata in Avignon, is considered a deity among theatre connoisseurs and enthusiasts.
'Harry Partch knew exactly what he was doing. He chose very specific bourbon bottles to fill in those 43 steps in the octave. So he made music that is very accessible, but also very elusive. And that's what good art should do.'
"The only one who still dares to go for the elite". On his way to the car park under the Passengers Terminal Amsterdam, the retired newspaper reviewer who once had a page on music sighed at the feeling of his part of society. It was after the press conference where the programme of Holland Festival 2014 was presented. He was talking, as we sank deeper and deeper, about Pierre Audi, the artistic director of that Holland Festival, who this year announced his last - and most glorious - programme ever.
"That sounds different. A bit sad."
I just played F, B, D♯ and G♯. Better known as the Tristan chord. But on guitar. My audience consists of 15 toddlers.
Thibaud Delpeut, up-and-coming talent in theatre land, has been appointed artistic director of The Utrecht Games. Jacques van Veen has been appointed as managing director to exude sufficient confidence in the business field as well. He previously won his spurs at the Holland Festival and Groningen City Theatre.
The collaboration between pianist Tomoko Mukaiyama and choreographer Nicole Beutler in the performance 'Shirokuro', seen last week at the Holland Festival, provides a beautiful perspective on two piano sonatas by Galina Ustvolskaya. 'Shirokuro' means black and white in Japanese. Despite strong visuals and impressive co-protagonists on stage, the Russian composer's absolute music is never explained and therefore retains its sheer power.
Gorgeous dresses, big sunglasses and high heels. It is clear that the performance by the famous Moscow theatre company Theatre of Nations also attracted a large Russian audience. Men in suits occasionally talking to their sleeves seem to testify to Russian billionaires present. But nothing could be further from the truth when suddenly Princess Beatrix and her entourage enter the auditorium.
69,500 visitors, at least 5,000 fewer than previous editions, but the halls were fuller. With 82% audience occupancy, the Holland Festival organisers are satisfied with the 2013 festival. Whether that higher occupancy rate, apart from the smaller number of performances (14 fewer than last year) is also due to smaller halls, is impossible to find out from here, but the fact that the large Theater Carré, with its many unsellable low-visibility seats, was also hardly used this year will certainly have helped.
What to expect from a 'musicabanda' from East Tyrol? Gemütliche folk music? Yodelling? Dance music for weddings and parties? An evening in a beer pub? Either way: definitely not Mahler. But why not, thought the Franui from the village of Innervillgraten. Result: an enervating performance around orchestral songs. We have never heard Mahler like this before.
There are those who spend nights queuing for a ticket. After all, the Berliner Ensemble is mythologically big. As big as the Royal Shakespeare Company in England, or La Comédie Française in France. Monuments to cultural history, dedicated to one writer, like Brecht or Shakespeare, or to an entire history, as the French are used to. We Dutch have
Multidisciplinary jack-of-all-trades Chris Marclay has broken through with his film project The Clock: every second of the day represented with found footage. It took him five years to make the 24-hour work. That says something about the way he makes his art. The incredible precision with which he edits makes his work so convincing that the viewer almost falls into a trance.
The Holland Festival presented three of his works at EYE, the new film museum, in which he collaborated with MAZE, a descendant of the Maarten Altena Ensemble.
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