A unique concert performance with readings from the novels Spring, Summer, Autumn and Winter by Ali Smith, one of the greatest Scottish authors of our time. Every year, Smith wrote a new novel, highlighting contemporary themes such as ecology, migration, Brexit and more. NEuE has commissioned four female composers to create new ensemble works inspired by the novels. This unique mix of music and literature is presented in collaboration with the National Theater, where a matching theater performance will premiere with director Eric de Vroedt.
Programma
NTB – Herfst (wereldpremière)
Anna Thorvaldsdottir – Spectra
Alice Yeung – Winter (wereldpremière)
Peter Maxwell Davies – Een Treurpavane voor Deze Afgeleide Tijden
Seung Won Oh – Lente (wereldpremière)
Kinan Azmeh – Over Eenzaamheid
Sara Zamboni – Zomer (wereldpremière)
Curious about the big bang of American modern music? This is it, for real!
After the premiere of this classic by Terry Riley in 1962, everything in music suddenly changed. Riley gives free space: the instrumental line-up remains completely open, there is no conductor and the performance can last as long as the players want.
Resistance can be a calling, but it has its own voice and it wants to be heard. In 1973, at the end of the Vietnam War, Hans Werner Henze gave voice to 20 resistance poets in the 22 songs of his cycle Voices. A complete performance of the work, such as now, takes more than an hour and a half. Henze wrote it for a female and a male vocal soloist, with instrumental groups whose fifteen musicians, in addition to their own instruments, also play about seventy ‘world percussion’ instruments, from glass to gong. The epilogue is a pre-Columbian Festival of Flowers, a vision of a more peaceful world. Henze called Voices his ‘Lied von der Erde’. Henze himself had emigrated from post-war Germany to the mythical paradise of Italy, fleeing both homophobia and what he saw as the totalitarian serialism of the avant-garde composers’ clique in Darmstadt. He left behind an immense oeuvre and Voices is perhaps one of his most captivating and still highly relevant works.
Conductor: Carlo Boccadoro
Carina Vinke, alto
Peter Tantsits, tenor
Why are we inclined to draw such hard boundaries? Whether it concerns national borders, between us and them, between inside and outside, between the digital domain and ‘real’ life – physical and psychological borders play a prominent role in our consciousness. In the narrative performance Grensvariaties on music by Martijn Padding (1956), writer P.F. Thomése answers this question based on stories from his own family history and from his daily life. An intimate performance about a wide-ranging subject.
Felicia van den End, flute
James Meldrum, clarinet
Ryan Linham, trumpet
Astrid Haring, harp
Emlyn Stam, viola
P.F. Thomése, narration
In the concert series ‘Dwarsliggers’, New European Ensemble presents the stories of composers who go against the current. In ‘When I Listen’, discover the powerful compositions of Julius Eastman (1940-1990), imbued with political meaning and inspired by his experience as a gay, African-American artist. During this concert you will experience what he himself called organic music.
Author Glenn Helberg provides his insights into the complexity and diversity of our existence. There will also be new music by Jalalu-Kalvert Nelson; the African-American composer with roots in Oklahoma who found a home in Switzerland, explores the deep connection with African-American culture through his music.
Program
Derrick Skye – American mirror
Jalalu-Kalvert Nelson – After
Julius Eastman – Gay Guerrilla
New European Ensemble
Glenn Helberg, host
New European Ensemble celebrates Arnold Schoenberg’s 150th birthday and the ensemble’s fifteenth anniversary! Henk Guittart, former violist of the Schönberg Quartet, presents a fresh, new version of Schönberg’s Violin Concerto. Dutch composer Martijn Padding is inspired by Schönberg’s colorful expressionist paintings in a new work commissioned by NEuE. The program concludes with the Serenade op.24; the first work that the ensemble performed when it was founded in 2009. A celebration of contemporary music!
Arnold Schönberg Violin Concerto (arr. Henk Guittart)
Martijn Padding Ma vie en couleurs (world premiere)
Arnold Schoenberg Serenade op. 24
New European Ensemble
Maria Milstein violin
Konrad Boehmer (1941) played a key role in the development of new music in the Netherlands. This program features the world premiere of his previously unperformed Rabies for piano quintet alongside a Fünf Bagatellen, in the style of Anton Webern. In addition to work by Boehmer, his close friend Willem Breuker is also an important player in the Dutch jazz world. Varèse and Nono were also great composers of the 20th century from whom Boehmer was inspired.
Konrad Boehmer – Fünf Bagatellen (4′) cl.tpt.vla.vcl.triangel
Edgar Varèse – Octandre (7′) fl.ob.cl.bsn.hn.tpt.tbn.dbs
Konrad Boehmer – Qadar (16′) fl.cl.vln.vcl.pno
Luigi Nono – Polifonica – Monodia – Ritmica (10′) fl.cl.bcl.sax.hn.pno.perc
pause
Konrad Boehmer – Da Ciri fl.cl.vibraphone.pno.vln.vcl
Willem Breuker – Fidget (6′) left
Konrad Boehmer – Rabioso (15′) pno.string quartet (world premiere)