U-turn / Concerts
October 15, 2006
Sofia Gubaidulina
Sofia Gubaidulina gives directions
to Pauline Post (Photo RV)Muziekgebouw aan het IJ had its doors open this afternoon for a public rehearsal in attendance of composer Sofia Gubaidulina. A good occasion to sniff the atmosphere and take some snapshots.
It is highly entertaining and educative to see some colleagues at work, like pianist Pauline Post getting directions how to perform some bars in Rubaiyat, or see Sofia Gubaidulina and bassoonist Stafanie Liedtke worry about a crescendo and decrescendo in Hommage à T.S. Eliot without losing or adding tones in a particular multiphonic.
This evening is the last of a small Gubaidulina festival in Amsterdam. Coming week she will be in Groningen where new music organization Prime and het Noord Nederlands Orkest are responsible for a five day festival about Gubaidulina and Heiner Goebbels.
Posted by Renske at 18:43 UTC | permanent link
October 7, 2006
Wind and rain
Sound garden Kampen (Photo RV)One of the fun things of carillon concerts is that circumstances aren't always predicable. In Gdansk we had ideal conditions, but when Frans Haagen performed Square Prayer last night in Kampen at the opening concert of the Beiaardfestival (Dutch), the wind was blowing the sound away from the listening garden.
The audience (real diehards) where sheltering under their umbrellas and were offered a cup of coffee during the concert to keep warm.
Actually, I had a very good time. I went out to the main shopping street (the shops were open) and saw people pointing to the tower and dancing in the street on the carillon music.
In which classical concert halls does this happen!?
Posted by Renske at 17:46 UTC | permanent link
October 1, 2006
Organ festival
While I write this, in Utrecht the Klankkleurenfestival is coming to its conclusion with a performance of Stravinsky's Rite of Spring in a adaptation for organ. Earlier tonight I went to the first of two performances this evening where I witnessed an accompanying ballet that was completely obsolete in meaning.
To hear the Rite of Spring on the Marcussen-organ in the Nicolaï was a bit of a surprise. In general it worked quite well, although sometime the low registers had a habit of sounding muddy.
Speaking to Steven Taylor and Dick van Dijk who are part of the the festival organization, they told me it was a great success and many concerts were attended by more people than they had counted on. Even Swedish Radio came along to record a concert.
Posted by Renske at 21:24 UTC | permanent link
September 29, 2006
Standing ovation hazard
Two explicit minimal music concerts is throwing me way back to the days I still studied at the conservatory.
First the combined De Volharding's and Percussion Group The Hague's birthday party for Steve Reich with old and new works in Het Muziekgebouw. Nice, but alas not as on the edge as Reich's music needs to come to live.
But it was grades better than the poor performance by the Erfurt Opera's performance of Philip Glass's Waiting for the Barbarians. Out of tune (very often), out of sync (choir and orchestra) and a weak storyline. Where opera could function as food for thought about some issue (as is the case with the canceled Idomeneo performance in Berlin at the moment), we, the audience stumble over flaws a professional opera company should not exhibit.
It was therefore incomprehensible that a larger part of the audience gave a standing ovation (which seems to obligatory at the moment in the Netherlands). Maybe people want to feel they get the best performance for their bucks (somewhere between 35 and 65 euros per seat) even when, considering the price tag, we had all reasons to boo at them full speed.
Posted by Renske at 12:12 UTC | permanent link
July 23, 2006
Open air delightment
Sound garden (Photo RV)One week without my computer and the internet has had a healing effect. I had a kind of a system overload, so I desperately needed a break. Whereto? Well, if there is premiere at hand the choice is obvious, so me and my partner went to Gdansk in Poland.
The belltower of the recently badly damaged St. Catherine's Church formed the instrument of choice, since this was one of the intruments used during the 15th World Carillon Congress. Next to the tower is a lovely garden with benches, seating about 150 people. Fortunately we had a blue sky and about 23 degrees Celsius and shade from a couple of treetops.
In contrast with concert halls the sound of carillon and the electronics weren't limited to the garden, so many bystanders in the streets looked up and wondered what was happening. When one lives in the neighborhood the carillon sounds become part of city life and one doesn't hear them anymore. But with the electronics this was totally different.
Frans (Haagen) played beautifully. And this is an understatement since the keyboard wasn't replaced after the fire and still suffered from the water the Gdansk fire department sprayed over it to prevent the tower catching fire. Some of the keys were kind of stuck, but somehow Frans managed to muscle his way through, without noticeable artifacts for the listeners down below.
Posted by Renske at 08:50 UTC | permanent link
July 15, 2006
Laughing in a church
Today the International Organfestival in Haarlem opened with free concerts in the Sint Bavo church. The carillonneur (I seem to have a lot going on with carillons, lately) played on his instrument while he was visible on videoscreens. The same for organ-player Jos van der Kooy. The Amstel Saxophone Quartet played very well music by Arvo Pärt that suited the situation beautifully. This one hour concert was concluded with a short 1920 silent movie with Buster Keaton with improvisation on the Müller-organ. And it is always a pleasure to see Buster Keaton in action!
Posted by Renske at 17:03 UTC | permanent link
April 22, 2006
Perseverance
Muziekgebouw (Photo RV)Last night the ensembles Volharding and Doelenensemble teamed up for a concert in Het Muziekgebouw. The concert had a couple of surprises (at least for me).
To begin with Wim Lamans piece Vortex: it was much more interesting and entertaining than I expected. But the first piece after the break by Peter Andriaansz, Structures II, took me off guard. His stretch music really annoyed me while listening to it. Kind of the same reaction I had when I heard Phil Niblock's music in Ostrava.
But at some point, just before they played the final notes, I started to realize I liked the piece. And when they were done I was pretty amazed: I could have taken in some more. With ca. 20 minutes Structues II is actually too short!
Most people came however (I think) for Luca Francesconi's Body Electric. Francesconi composed his music with the Abu Grhaib prison abuses in mind. And although I am sure Francesconi is sincere in his intentions, his music uses too much brainpower. For me he overshoots his intentions, even with Irvine Arditti brushing his strings as he was doing.
While listening I lost the Abu Grhaib association within the first notes without being able to retrieve his real intentions.
For that matter, Arditti did have a better opportunity with Mary Finsterer's violin concerto Constans (composed in 1995), although the violin part did blend with the ensemble extremely well. So well, it submerged in the ensemble, despite the amplification.
Posted by Renske at 11:25 UTC | permanent link
June 12, 2005
Dada @ Warp
LateNite Organ Delight (Photo: RV)A strange combination last Friday when I lost my virginity as a concertgoer in the new Muziekgebouw aan 't IJ. It was a very good concert, but I left the hall in a middle of a piece because it was HORRIFIC.
This concert was preceded with a lot of buzz. The London Sinfonietta together with music label Warp. The highlight this evening according to the program notes appeared to be true: George Antheils's Ballet Méchanique with a 1924 film by Fernand Léger and Man Ray.
With Anteil's music being an over the top sort of Stravinsky one can only admire the inventiveness of people like Léger and Man Ray. All videoclips this evening had the support of modern video-editing equipment where Léger and Man Ray had to invent everything they did with primitive means. Their film, in combination with the splendid performance conducted by Jurjen Hempel, made a deep impact impression where most other empty commercial like films failed to make a punch.
Jamie Lidell (I like his examples on Warp's website a lot better!) was at the other of the spectrum this evening. This was the part I left the hall. He lost me when the music became nothing more than electronic squeaking so loud it was hurting my ears.
Here we have another electronic artist who thinks that if something is possible it must be used.
Sigh.
After having escaped Lidell's sonic battlefield this peculiar Australian guy Thomas Meadowcroft (see photo) was playing 70s music with a stuffed dog at his feet, underlining this was a night with impression shifts at warp speed.
Posted by Renske at 14:25 UTC | permanent link
June 6, 2005
Impact of NOW
With Jacob ter Veldhuis' ...NOW... fresh in mind I had a recall of an experience a couple of years ago. I was doing some research in a German archive. The material I was looking for had its origin in the early to late 1930s.
Since the research was rather technical (it had something to do with early aviation) I somehow thought my research was neutral from a political standpoint.
I was wrong. Within the material I was researching I came across letters from Nazi hotshots. I felt history's claw on my shoulder and a shiver down my spine when I saw the sincerity of these letters and the way they were signed: H.H.
Until then, the black page of our recent history wasn't something I knew from books, films and stories. At that particular moment, I had a tiny part of history in my hands.
Our history is NOW as is our future.
Posted by Renske at 19:34 UTC | permanent link
March 1, 2005
Motionsickness at the opera...ehh...ballet
I am prone to motion sickness. During the first glider flight of the season I just know I will get sick. It fades away when my body adjusts again to the movements of the airplane. Since I know this I anticipate and it doesn't become a problem.
To my surprise I had a tad of motion sickness when we went to the ballet adaptation of Don Giovanni tonight. Cause was the delusional scenery: a front scrum with dancers performing behind it.
Since they used four of this screens on the deep Muziektheater stage to project buildings, walls, landscapes and different kind of 3D effects on it, it was sometimes hard to follow the onstage action. It was just too much visual information. Not good, for the story gets rather abstract when it's just limited to ballet. I don't want to question myself where to look.
A real miss is the final image. Don Giovanni is in hell, staged and lighted beautifully, but then this image is replaced by a sunset projection: devastating overkill. We know he's dead!
Rob Zuidam adapted the Mozart score, sometimes brilliantly and most of the time pretty good. Some moments I had associations with 1970s disco versions of Mozart's symphony no. 40, mainly since I felt the percussion sometimes as an intrusion to the original music. Especially the use of the hi-hat was annoying after a while, it sounded like a trick.
Volkskrant critic Frits van der Waa wrote after the premiere, he found the parts Zuidam composed to bridge the cuts in the Mozart score took the form of welds, and I agree with him. I wonder what I would have done, in this situation, but the difference is just too big. Perhaps Zuidam should have digested Mozart more into his own language overall to make it really work. (Mozarts music, btw, does work by itself: a real pitfall.)
To adapt a Mozart score in this way is pretty darn hard and I admire Rob Zuidam for doing it.
Posted by Renske at 23:17 UTC | permanent link