‘Toen kon hij zich in drieën splitsen en was hij zanger, danser en trompettist’, zegt een meisje op het scherm voorafgaand aan Michaels Jugend. Zij is een van de kindertjes die aan het begin van elke dag vertellen waar aus LICHT over gaat. Een goede vondst van Pierre Audi en zijn artistieke team, want het universum dat Karlheinz Stockhausen ons…
Onlangs werd een petitie gestart voor herstel van de persaccreditatie van Olivier Keegel door De Nationale Opera. Hij krijgt geen perskaarten meer omdat hij zich op het blog Operagazet en in Het Parool veelvuldig negatief uitliet over de programmakeuzes van Pierre Audi. Bovendien hekelde hij diens voorliefde voor ‘regisseurstheater’, waarin volgens hem de inhoud ten prooi valt aan een vergezochte…
Hungarian composer György Ligeti (1923-2006) suffered under several dictatorships; the Nazis killed his father and brother during World War II, and after the War the Communists forced him to write sweet 'folk music'. After the 1956 Hungarian uprising, he fled to Vienna and then to Cologne. In the West, he unpopularised into an idiosyncratic composer, who already...
In February 2017, The Collective combined the radical music of Galina Ustvolskaya with the heavenly chants of Hildegard von Bingen. Less strange than it seems, as both were deeply religious and composed from inner necessity. On Thursday 26 October, Spectra Ensemble places Ustvolskaya alongside Karel Goeyvaerts at Muziekgebouw aan 't IJ. Ustvolskaya is well enough known here in the country by now, but who was...
On Thursday 19 October, Peter Eötvös conducts the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra in the Dutch premiere of his organ concerto Multiversum, which he commissioned for the company. His brand new composition is flanked by works by György Ligeti and Claude Vivier. Transylvania's rich musical tradition Hungarian composer and conductor Peter Eötvös (Székelyudvarhely, 1944) grew up in Transylvania. Towards the end of...
Soepel dalen ze de trap af van het Amsterdamse Concertgebouw. Lucas en Arthur Jussen zijn dressed to kill. Met hun kek gesneden, doorzichtige kostuums hebben ze de eerste slag al binnen nog voor ze één noot gespeeld hebben van Mantra van Karlheinz Stockhausen. Niet alleen in hun outfit, maar ook in hun eigenzinnig spel tonen de jonge pianisten lef. Heerlijk, zo’n…
Lucas and Arthur Jussen are 'hot'. You could call the young piano brothers the headliner of this Holland Festival Proms. Well before the start of their concert, visitors are therefore already gathering in the corridors around the main hall of the Concertgebouw. Everyone is out for a good seat. To sit, because standing, as we know it from...
Among classical music-loving audiences, the two young pianists Lucas (1993) and Arthur (1996) Jussen need little introduction. For many years, the talented piano brothers have been filling halls like the Concertgebouw with four-handed or otherwise, interpretations of classics such as Beethoven, Mozart and Schubert. With the avant-garde piece Mantra by Karlheinz Stockhausen (1928-2007), to be performed as part of the Holland Festival,...
Vorig jaar barstte een kleine rel los toen het Holland Festival bekendmaakte in 2019 een grootschalig project op te tuigen rond de opera Licht van Karlheinz Stockhausen. Modernemuziekhaters schreeuwden moord en brand, want wie zit er nou te wachten op de akelige piepknor van de Duitse notensmid? Toch ontstond er meteen een run op de kaarten. Ook na zijn dood…
In de nieuwe Amsterdamse sociëteit Sexyland werd gisteravond een prelaunch georganiseerd van het Opera Forward Festival OFF [hints]Van 18 tot en met 31 maart in onder andere De Nationale Opera (voorheen het Muziektheater/Stopera)[/hints]. Ik was onder de indruk. Best verrassend. Opera Nopera Disclaimer: steller dezes is geen operaconnaisseur. De laatste twee opera’s die ik zag waren beide van Philip Glass (de ware…
Towards the end of the year, we are inundated with lists. The best CDs, the best books, the performances you shouldn't have missed, etcetera. In this sea of choices from reviewers and other opinion makers, one post stands out, from opera critic Olivier Keegel. He started a veritable petition to prevent Karlheinz Stockhausen's 'Aus Licht' from being performed in June 2019,...
It is good that the Holland Festival dares to stick its neck out, by making Olga Neuwirth (1968), unknown here, its focus composer this year. On reflection, by the way, I would have preferred to hear her high-profile opera Bählamms Fest in a staged version once, rather than Le Encantadas. This piece composed last year did not quite manage to live up to the high expectations...
Erik Voermans (1958) is one of those people who writes down what you think yourself, but would never air publicly. The music editor of Het Parool likes to pose as your unsuspecting neighbour's boy, watching the music world with amazement. Take the phenomenon of opera: 'That's when someone with a knife in his taas walks around for half an hour singing that he's going to die.' If he...
In 1961, Krzysztof Penderecki (Dębica, 1933) put his name on the map in one fell swoop with Lament for the Victims of Hiroshima. This avant-garde, expressionist piece for string orchestra flogs the ears with heavily dissonant harmonies full of microtones. With this uncompromising orgy of sound, the Pole struck the mental and physical inferno caused by the atomic bomb on the Japanese city in 1945 in the...
He would have turned 91 on 26 March, but died Tuesday night, 5 January, in his hometown of Baden-Baden. Pierre Boulez was the last surviving composer of the group that reshaped the direction of music after WWII. His fellow maestros preceded him: Karlheinz Stockhausen died in 2007, Luciano Berio in 2003, Karel Goeyvaerts in 1993 and...
In 1970 was Karlheinz Stockhausen (1928-2007) uitgekeken op ‘intuïtieve’ composities waarin de uitvoerder zelf zijn of haar pad moest kiezen uit een reeks van schriftelijke aanwijzingen. Zoals bijvoorbeeld Intensity, waarvan de partituur bestaat uit deze tekst: Speel de individuele tonen met zoveel toewijding tot je de warmte voelt die van jou afstraalt. Speel verder en hou ze aan Zo lang als je kunt.…
In the 1970s, Reinbert de Leeuw stormed the popular charts with recordings of Erik Satie's early piano music. He managed to strike exactly the right chord with his ultra-rare performances of pieces like Gnossiennes and Gymnopédies. The albums sold like hot cakes and were awarded gold and platinum records. Two decades later, he recorded them...
In 1985, Unsuk Chin (Seoul 1961) won the Gaudeamus Music Prize with Spektra for three cellos, six years later she made her breakthrough with her Akrostichon-Wortspiel for soprano and ensemble composed for the Nieuw Ensemble. In 2004, she won the Grawemeyer Award, the world's most prestigious music prize; in 2007, she made a deep impression with her opera Alice in Wonderland. Tomorrow, Thursday 22 October.
He had gone out to smoke a cigar that evening, 15 September 1945, but curfew had already begun. As he lit his smoke, a US soldier subititively fired three bullets. Fatally hit, 61-year-old Anton Webern stumbled into the home of his daughter and son-in-law, where he collapsed and died. The bullet was probably...
From Thursday 17 September onwards, Maastricht will be dominated by four days of arts festival Musica Sacra. Started in 1983 as the European Festival of Religious Music, other art disciplines are now also presented, in atmospheric churches and other historical venues. This year's theme is 'The Way', loosely inspired by the pilgrimage route to pilgrimage site Santiago de Compostela, with the central question of whether...
Wat zou het einde van een jaar zijn zonder favorietenlijstjes? Daarom hierbij mijn keuze van de drie mooiste cd’s/dvd’s van 2014. 1. Unsuk Chin: 3 Concertos De Koreaans-Duitse Unsuk Chin geldt als een van de belangrijkste componisten van onze tijd. Zij werd vele malen onderscheiden, onder andere met de prestigieuze Grawemeyer Award (2004) en de niet minder belangwekkende Zuid-Koreaanse Ho-Am…
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 finest 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
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...
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