U-turn
« Flammen and the unintended blogobrake | Main |Impact of NOW »
June 04, 2005
The cursor of time
I just returned from a Holland Festival concert with the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra. I must say the concert was quiet a ride.
To begin with the venue was an old industrial complex De Gashouder. The KCO didn't play in its normal configuration ones.
The theme was spatial music, and spatial it was. Kicking off with Gabrieli it was like watching a tennis match. Left seated brass players (from the audience stand of view) tossing some notes over to the right seated brass players with the conductor (Markus Stenz) in the middle with his face towards the public. How often do we see that!?
Gabrieli was followed by music from György Kurtag. His Dubbleconcerto for piano, cello and two ensembles. Great piece of music although at first I thought it would be some modern gobbledewobble. But the music was brilliantly orchestrated, sometimes very fragile and with beautiful chord progressions.
Another highlight was the seamless progression from Ives' From the steeples and the mountains to Mozart's Serenade nr. 8 in D for 4 orchestra, KV 286
The above was all much better than Brett Dean's Parteitag for orchestra and video. I consider a title like this as heavy stuff. And he didn't play to it. The video was very brainy, but my guts need to be filled as well.
That was done with Jacob ter Veldhuis' and Jaap & Floris Drupsteen's ...NOW... A very good integration of video and music, with a splendid imagination of what NOW is; the cursor of time.
Posted by Renske at 00:21 UTC | permanent link