Monday 18 May 2015 he will be cremated in Utrecht: Ton Hartsuiker, tireless champion of new music in our country. In recent years, his health was ailing; he would narrowly miss his 82nd birthday. He was active as pianist, music educator, conservatory director, administrator and radio presenter. Even after his retirement in 1998, he did not consider quitting his...
On Sunday afternoon 26 April, I was a member of the press jury at the final of the Prinses Christina Competition in Lucent Danstheater in The Hague. Definitely not a punishment, as all six finalists performed at top level, no matter how young and inexperienced they were. Time and again, the organisation proves that all the gloom about the future of classical music is nonsense: this year too, there were...
Only those who live in a locked hut on the moors will have missed the fact that jazz drummer John Engels will soon turn 80. He has been a guest on television programmes like VPRO Vrije Geluiden and the special jazz edition of De Wereld Draait Door, and will be honoured on his birthday 13 May with a celebratory concert at the Bimhuis. Also published was the small-scale biography...
Wednesday 8 April kicks off the fourth edition of the biennial World Minimal Festival at Amsterdam's Muziekgebouw aan 't IJ. For five days, the capital will be dominated by the immensely popular music movement, which invariably attracts packed halls. Several parts of this instalment are already sold out, including the opening concert with special guest Terry Riley. There are still...
He has been given many labels. From (post-)minimalist to hardcore modernist and from neo-romanticist to neo-spiritualist. 'I don't pay attention to them anymore,' says composer Erkki-Sven Tüür (Estonia, 1959). Yet he responds somewhat surly when I ask in an email what he thinks of such descriptions: 'You either like my music or not.' Via Skype, he answers eight...
Reinbert de Leeuw conducted an electrifying concert around Leoš Janáček at the Muziekgebouw aan het IJ on Thursday 12 March. The synergy between instrumentalists, singers and conductor yielded flawless performances, which were rewarded with ovational applause by the almost sold-out audience both before and after the interval. The cheers even led to an encore: a song from the popular cycle Rikadla...
They are each other's opposites: Michiel Borstlap exudes luxury and relaxation, Micha Hamel a tense frown. But the two not inconsiderable gentlemen have both recently joined the Academy of Arts. They played new work last weekend and I spoke to them afterwards. Actually, I was programming Michiel Borstlap's concert for a theatre in Driebergen. In an expensive Jaguar, we drove to a restaurant for coffee...
Ralph van Raat is by far the most important solo pianist in the contemporary repertoire in our country, fellow pianist Maarten van Veen pursues an idiosyncratic course in ensemble playing in modern music. When the two musicians work together, they prove to complement each other perfectly. Under the aegis of the Doelen Ensemble, they played together with percussionists Colin Currie and Benjamin Ramirez, for whom the same...
What would the end of a year be without favourites lists? Therefore, herewith my choice of the three best CDs/DVDs of 2014. Unsuk Chin: 3 Concertos Korean-German composer Unsuk Chin is considered one of the most important composers of our time. She has been awarded many times, including the prestigious Grawemeyer Award (2004) and the no less important South Korean Ho-Am...
Among the audience at Korzo theatre in The Hague at the performance 'Here We Live And Now' are a striking number of dancers from Nederlands Dans Theater (NDT). No wonder, as many of their colleagues are involved in this performance. This annual programme featuring young choreographic talent is a co-production of NDT and Korzo. The addition 'Hague' talent, by the way, may be taken with...
At Bare choreographer Kenzo Kusuda shows portraits of six musicians of the New European Ensemble as in a choreographic documentary. These come at you in the dark and finally climb over your seat. You can't make your message any clearer.
The post on facebook that dominated my timeline today: the spontaneous concert at NS station Amsterdam Centraal, taken from the NRC's website (link: http://www.nrc.nl/muziek/2014/10/09/hoe-drie-artiesten-onverwacht-samen-optraden-op-adam-cs/ For several weeks, this station has had a piano on which anyone can play. A playful action by the NS to make waiting more fun. This leads to surprising situations. Like this one in which a pianist...
Playing in your socks in front of 1,000 people on the Saturday night of the TodaysArt festival? Should be possible, thought musician Nils Frahm. And he has a very logical reason for it.
This Sunday, September 28, the one-day festival Alba Rosa Viva will take place in Utrecht, in honour of the 125th birth anniversary of Alba Rosa Viëtor. Alba Rosa who?!!! Well, Alba Rosa Viëtor was an Italian violinist and composer who was born Alba Rosa in Milan in 1889. In 1919, she married Dutch businessman Jan Freseman Viëtor and in...
Wijbrand Schaap: 'When it comes to talent development and embedding in society, it is also very much about the absolute basics. It also touches on the minister's two functions: education and culture. Arts education in primary schools does not really help embedding. No attention has been paid to art in the pedagogical academies for years....
Last night, Ukrainian composer Anna Korsun (1986, Donetsk) won the coveted Gaudeamus Music Prize in TivoliVredenburg. This consists of a cash prize of €4550, which serves as an honorarium for a new composition that will have its world premiere in a subsequent instalment. The international jury, consisting of composers Vanessa Lann (Netherlands), Oscar Bianchi (Switzerland) and Wim Hendericx (Belgium) chose her unanimously from...
The 300-strong audience stood up as one after Leonard Bernstein's infectious performance of Candide at the Hilton Hotel in Amsterdam last night. The performance of this 'pocket version' of Bernstein's cheerful musical/opera about the incorrigible optimist Candide, produced by the Nationale Reisopera, took place indoors, in the hotel's ballroom, due to the weather conditions. After all, the Grachtenfestival has to be...
Tonight, the 67th edition of the Cannes Film Festival opens with Grace of Monaco, a biopic with a major lead role for Nicole Kidman. Jury president of the world's premier film event is New Zealand filmmaker Jane Campion. Three of the other six jury members also
his women. Does Cannes have something to make up for?
Tonight, Feb 14 honours the North Netherlands Orchestra at the Oosterpoort in Groningen Simeon ten Holt, who died in 2012, with the world premiere of his orchestral work Centri-fuga, which he completed in 1979. It has never been performed to this day and will be christened tonight by conductor David Porcelijn. After the interval, Ten Holt's magnum opus will also be heard Canto ostinato for four pianos, performed by Sandra and Jeroen van Veen, Fred Oldenburg and Irene Russo. Earlier this week, other pianists also performed it at the Amsterdam Concertgebouw.
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...
With a spot-on performance of Mendelssohn's Second Piano Trio, the Storioni Trio concluded last night's opening concert of the Storioni Festival at the Frits Philipszaal in Eindhoven. Spread across six different halls in five cities in Brabant, they will present an ambitious programme, featuring befriended musicians and composers.
Toonkunstkoor Amsterdam has had a name to live up to since its establishment in 1829. In earlier times, it was invariably on hand when the Concertgebouw Orchestra and Willem Mengelberg performed large-scale choral works. Although the choir still consists of amateurs and its ties with the illustrious orchestra have weakened, it still puts (very) demanding pieces on its desks. For instance, the...
The Piano Man, the boy who went viral this weekend for playing the piano in front of a platoon of ME in Kiev, came up with his idea in Hoog Catharijne. NRC Handelsblad reports that. Like so many, 22-year-old Markian Matsech was walking through the Utrecht shopping centre this summer, just as the art event there Call of the Mall took place.
Tonight and tomorrow night, the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra kicks off the fourth season of the AAA series, with film music under the title 'Suspense'. But not everyone will immediately associate composers like Bartók, Lutyens and Schoenberg with cinema.
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