Padding: Kier - Wagemans: Dreams

This week I was distracted and couldn't bring myself to serious listening. Likely the fallout of previous week's hard slog. However, I still have to recap some of the things I heard whilst working on the report. Contemporary orchestral music works surprisingly well as an aural background when you are looking for the proverbial trees in the textual wood. I surveyed a variety of works, on Dutch classical radio's Concerthuis: Maderna's Venetian Journal, Henze's Symphony nr. 8, Peter-Jan Wagemans' De Stad en de Engel, Willem Jeths' Ombre Cinesi and finally two pieces that I listened to more closely; Martijn Padding's Kier (2005) and Peter-Jan Wagemans' Dreams (1995 version). (I also found out how to tape streaming audio so that I can keep listening to pieces when they have disappeared from the digital radio's playlist.) Anyway these are two relatively short pieces (10' and 15') from relatively accessible Dutch composers.

On his website Wagemans states that he aims to write music the emotional and musical essence of which can be grasped by listeners who are able to understand Mahler's Sixth. Dreams (with subsidiary title What did the last dinosaur dream of?) shows a recognisable kinship with the shadowy and monumental soundworld of the Tragic. The work came into being as four contrasting pieces for orchestra that have been welded to one another. It starts with a nervous introduction dominated by ponderous rhythms. This gives way to a long bleak stretch of music that ultimately explodes in a cataclysmic allegro. A long luftpause. A meandering slow section deepens the glacial, expressionist atmosphere and culminates in an angry, threefold brass peroration. Finally a long, exhausted coda. All in all Dreams comes across as very serious, accessible piece composed by seasoned professional with a good grip on his material. I've ordered a CD with his monumental Seventh Symphony to explore further.

Padding (born 1956) was a pupil of Louis Andriessen, doyen of Dutch minimalist/postmodern composers. And that is quite obvious from Kier, which assaults the listener as a brilliant, campy pastiche. I have been very impressed by the compositional finesse and surefootedness revealed by this short work and I am planning to keep an eye on the radio's playlists to hear more from this eclectic composer. Judging from the list of orchestral pieces listed on his website (including Glimpse, commissioned by Jos van Immerseel and Anima Eterna and inspired by Beethoven's sketches for his Tenth Symphony) Padding has been composing at breakneck speed.