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.

Mixed Arias by Mozart, Bizet and Verdi - Gershwin and jazz standards

Dutch Radio 4's Concerthuis has been another splendid discovery. I have listened to two full concerts via my iPad connected to the hifi setup. One was a gala concert from May this year with the soprano Anna Caterina Antonacci and the Rotterdam Philharmonic led by Christoph Ulrich Meier.  I was browsing the composer list looking for something short and familiar to listen to. Hitting Bizet brought me to this concert. The soloist wasn't familiar at all. A short snippet from Carmen, however, revealed a quite interesting voice, somewhere in between the soprano and mezzo range. I looked a few things up which revealed an artist with an unconventional career, spanning very different repertoires (from Renaissance to contemporary) and spending very little time in the recording studio (so small wonder I'd never heard of her). So I listened on, particularly enjoyed the Carmen pieces and the beautiful concluding aria from Verdi's Don Carlos. The RPO played very well, the sound from De Doelen concert hall was very good and the audience was disciplined but enthusiastic. Altogether an enjoyable listening experience, in its vibrant live ambience quite different from an average studio recording.

The other concert was even to a greater extent a case of serendipity. I wanted to check what was available under 'Bartok', but my finger selected 'Basie' instead. So I ended up with a performance of the Jazz Orchestra of the Concertgebouw, with pieces by Basie, Ellington and Gershwin, as well as a transcription of Tchaikovsky's Nutcracker Suite for large jazz ensemble. Same pattern here: I checked one of the shorter pieces and was sucked right in. Wow, this was a fantastic occasion with the orchestra playing their butts off. The Tchaikovsky was a good curtain raiser. Rudolf Brautigam was on the piano in a swinging version of  Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue. I was captivated by the Basie and Ellington standards. Gershwin's I Got Rhtyhm was a rousing finale, with the orchestra under full steam. The sound from the Concertgebouw was astonishingly good, with the brass section cutting like laser beam through the musical fabric. It was a real treat. Clearly, the Concerthuis has a lot to offer.