Both the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra and the also Royal Concertgebouw seem to be focusing on connection next season. Between young and old, between east and west, between left and right, between culture and press. 'Great that you all came,' says Jan Raes after the presentation of the 2017-18 season. 'The press is under pressure, as is culture,' continues
Maybe God is dead, but His church is alive. At least in Denmark. This has to do with what you might call the Danish paradox of faith: a highly secularised society with a Lutheran Folkekirke (=Volkskerk) supported by a large majority of the population [hints]The American sociologist Phil Zuckerman has commented on this aspect of Denmark (and also a little...
If he could have, photographer Ed van der Elsken would have preferred to have a camera built into his head, to capture the world twenty-four hours a day. What he did manage to make are countless beautiful photographs, films and books. The Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam shows his rich legacy at the major exhibition The camera in love. He was...
On Friday 10 February in Utrecht, the Nederlands Kamerkoor will kick off its concert series Sacred and Profane, based on Benjamin Britten's choral work of the same name. The programme also includes his popular cycle Hymn to St Cecilia, which he composed during World War II. The score was confiscated by the US Customs Service in 1942 because it allegedly contained codes that were dangerous to the state. The American fear of a...
In 1975, jazz musician Misha Mengelberg and artist Wim T. Schippers organised Een behoorlijk kabaal (Quite a racket) at Amsterdam's Mickery Theatre. For a week, they explore the different meanings of a concert in 'inimitable musical theatre'. Jacqueline Oskamp chose it as the title of her recently published book describing Dutch music history of the past century. Sad conclusion: there is...
He wrote more than twenty-five books, half of them for young people, but actually Jan Terlouw did not want to write at all. He was a mathematician and physicist, did nuclear fusion research and later became a politician - that was more than enough. Besides, writing right-handed (as it was taught in school) was torture for someone who is left-handed. It had then...
This week saw the publication of Nobel laureate Herta Müller's autobiography, My homeland, an apple stone. A few years ago, A Quattro Mani had an exclusive interview with the Romanian writer, when her first collection of poetry collages was published, The Skirt-chaser and its sly aunt. We spoke to her at her home in Berlin, she revealed how her poetry collages are created, and the making...
Last Sunday, Polish film legend Andrzej Wajda died at the age of 90. His work unfolds as a dramatised history book with an un-romantic take on heroism.
Taking an idea from Marieke Stordiau, bassoonist in the Hexagon Ensemble, Joost Galema, journalist and programmer, writes texts that deal with tree dreams, music and time. This creates Diary of a Cello, a piece that challenges the listener to think about the connections between nature and music. The premiere of Diary of a cello took place at the Amesfoort theatre De...
Last year, arts festival Musica Sacra was all about 'the road', inspired by the many pilgrim routes that lead to holy places. This year, Maastricht is all about the 'sacrifice of love'. At first sight, an anachronistic theme, which seems at odds with sentiments in our current society. The aggression against asylum seekers, the ruthless pursuit of profit by...
With an average of two novels a year, the Flemish writer has built up a huge and unique body of work in over thirty-five years - he turns 63 this week, but the number of books he has written far exceeds that number. Interview with the man who writes faster than his shadow, in ten quiz questions. 'Well, I don't appear to be a connoisseur of my own work, do I?'
"Things happen, and then they happen again, but not the same way, not quite; such is the logic of the biennial. And then there are things which have never happened before, and which happen now and in a time that seems somehow out of time, or takes our 'now' out with it." [hints]"Things happen, and then they happen again, but not....
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...
Lots of audience and wonderful stories made the Saturday of the literary festival Winternachten a party. For Norwegian writer Karl Ove Knausgård's visit in the afternoon, queues stretched from the hall to the front door of the Theater aan het Spui. Poet and writer Rodaan al Galidi read about his years spent in an asylum seekers' centre. ©Marc
With the death of Pierre Boulez on 5 January, modernism seemingly came to an end, but the two-year-old Ursula Mamlok (1923) is still alive and kicking. Although the German-American Mamlok hopes to turn 93 on 1 February, she is steadily composing.# In 2009, she wrote Aphorisms II for two clarinets, in which, as in all her pieces, she manages to couple atonality with a warm-blooded...
Propaganda is not just something that occurs in, say, Russia, but also in the West - more so than we ourselves realise. For example, is it widely believed today that the atomic bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki to force Japan to capitulate and thus end World War II, nothing could be further from the truth. In that respect, Germany goes...
The healing power of music, some firmly believe in it - in 2013, it was even the premise of the City of London Festival. Believing that music can connect people and have a healing effect on conflictual societies, festival director Ian Ritchie asked the Brodsky Quartet to commission a composition around this theme. Thus was born the by...
You have to dare to do it: name an opera after the main organiser behind the mass deportations and extermination camps of Jews in World War II and then not perform him as a character. Composer Alejandra Castro Espejo and librettist Bo Tarenskeen did it: their opera Eichmann, a production of the Diamond Factory, will premiere at the Muziekgebouw aan 't IJ on Wednesday 9 December. Adolf Eichmann was...
What titles come to mind when you hear the name Arvo Pärt? Sonatina opus 1; Symphony no. 1; Perpetuum mobile, or Fratres; Für Alina; Spiegel im Spiegel? My guess is the second set, because it was with pieces like these that Pärt conquered the world in the late 20th century. Audiences flocked in droves to immerse themselves in his sonorous sound world, but...
She is one of Finland's leading contemporary authors, but in the Netherlands few people have heard of her: Leena Lander[hints]More on Wikipedia: https://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leena_Lander[/hints]. High time that changed. We asked her translator Marja-Leena Hellings why you should read her just-released new novel Sunday Child. Finnish writer Leena Lander ©Chris van Houts[/capt... You can now...
Star Wars, Lord of the Rings, The Hunger Games... Would young people still be interested in history? Writer Anke Manschot believes so. On the eve of Children's Book Week, which starts today, her exciting and gripping historical book The Leap of Normandy, the world's first children's novel about D-Day, was published. Five questions to the author. Author Anke Manschot. ©Sasja Jansen Historical j......
In 1989, the Holland Festival placed composers from the Soviet Union at the centre. The music of Galina Ustvolskaya and Sofia Gubaidoelina hit like a bomb. The ladies proved to be here to stay, although they move at two extremes of our perception of sound. Ustvolskaya pounds her message into our eardrums with monomaniacal drive, Gubaidoelina intoxicates us with mysterious rustling and whispering sounds. For me,...
He had gone out to smoke a cigar that evening, 15 September 1945, but curfew had already begun. As he lit his smoker, a US soldier subitively 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...
Following the euro crisis, Culture Press focuses on Greece in a series of articles. In the first part, George Vermij looks at how film has influenced our image of the Mediterranean country. Is there not a more striking image of Greece than Antony Quinn as Zorba dancing the Sirtaki and finding resignation despite the harsh setbacks life offers? The...
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