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In the spotlight: Carlos Micháns
'Music as physical love'
Composer Carlos Micháns (60) lives for his music
By Mark van de Voort | 21 juli 2010 | 7:15
Translation: Hilary Staples
- Composer Carlos Micháns 2006 [photo Marcel Peek]
Music with a beating heart, a creative life full of diversity and passion. For the Dutch-Argentine composer Carlos Micháns music is his life. “I take my music along with me wherever I go, it is everything I need.” This year Micháns turns 60. A birthday concert with his musical friends is in the pipeline.
Celebrating one’s birthday, Carlos Micháns cannot be bothered about this. It doesn’t really do to try putting an age to a lively personality such as Carlos Micháns. He is actively involved in Dutch music life. Meeting him is something you don’t easily forget. He takes initiative, he brings musicians together and he inspires enthusiasm. His warm blooded passion resounds in his music, poetry and open attitude to life.
In the 1980s Carlos Micháns moved from his town of birth Buenos Aires to the Netherlands to study with Hans Kox, Tristan Keuris and Joep Straesser. He feels at home in our small country. Especially in the lively city of Utrecht.
'In my music I don’t like imitating'
From there Micháns travels all around the world. Creative influences come from everywhere: India, Indonesia and South America. And from the people he meets, far away or just round the corner. “But in my music I don’t like imitating. Nowadays you often see composers throwing all styles in a blender. Measuring and pruning are the magic words. Like the poet Rilke says in his poem Die Irren: ‘All partitions disappear’ and everything blends into one greenish-grey blur.”
Micháns arms himself against this by employing a ‘fairly strict, measured’ composition method. “Don’t stuff too many ideas into your music, as you soon lose track. Getting lost may be nice for a bit, but you should to be able to find your way back.”
Micháns’ music has an incredible imaginative power. “I am a visual person, I like to create atmospheres. I already used to be like that when I was young. When as a child I heard the Nutcracker Suite for the first time, this evoked a stream of surrealistic images. Images I can still see.” His Third Sinfonia Concertante, for example, is called ‘Kaleidos’ - Greek for ‘beautiful image’. A lively, kaleidoscopic piece, full of sharply etched contrasts and broad, meditative panoramas.
“My music is as physical love. Huge explosions followed by moments of recovery. Music comes from my entire body, an extra arm, an extension of what I am.” Kaleidos is an orchestral work that fans out widely, written for pianist Ronald Brautigam, violinist Isabelle van Keulen and clarinettist Michael Collins. By now there is a beautiful series of Sinfonia Concertantes which Micháns has written for, among others, violinists such as Liza Ferschtman, Ronald Hoogeveen and Francien Schatborn.
'Sometimes the most beautiful things come from practice'
Over the years Micháns has built up a working relationship with many top musicians. Recently Micháns composed a Harp Concerto (2006) for rising star Lavinia Meijer and a Concerto for Saxophone and Orchestra (2009) for Arno Bornkamp. “I try to write as idiomatically as possible for the instruments. As a composer you have to keep on learning from your musicians. Sometimes the most beautiful things come from practice. For example, Arno Bornkamp told me that the original saxophone concerto took him a lot of time if he had to play it only on the alto saxophone. There were a lot more possibilities on two saxophones and his suggestion worked wonders for the piece.”
In all respects Micháns is a self-made man who is very good at surrounding himself with musical friends. He regularly gives concerts at his home in Utrecht, he releases his own CDs and organises concert tours abroad with musicians, like the one in Indonesia early this year with Lavinia Meijer and the Aurelia Saxophone Quartet. In December 2009 Micháns founded the Kaleidos Foundation which brings all his activities together. “Organising is in my blood. I always tell musician friends: ‘You should create your own space, the world is big enough.’”
More music?
Special concert
- On Sunday 31 October (8 p.m.) there will be a special concert featuring Micháns’ works in Vredenburg Leeuwenbergh, Utrecht. With performances by the Utrecht String Quartet, oboist Pauline Oostenrijk and the Sirius Saxophone Quartet.
De Concertzender
Performances of Sinfonia Concertante no. 4 and the Harp Concerto, on the Dutch classical radio station De Concertzender
YouTube
Impression of Trois Visions Tantriques - Carlos Micháns for the Aurelia Saxophone Quartet and Lavinia Meijer (harp):
More details?
Download MCN-brochure Carlos Micháns - A Portrait (PDF 28 p.): introduction, biography, list of compositions, a summary of compact discs available, and music illustrations.
Website www.carlosmichans.nl
Muziekencyclopedie over Carlos Micháns
Sheet music library, audio, video screening and listening? By appointment at the MIC, Amsterdam.
Mark van de Voort is a historian and freelance music journalist. He works for, among others, the daily Brabants Dagblad, festival November Music and De Toonzaal 's-Hertogenbosch. He also makes programmes on contemporary music for the Dutch classical radio station De Concertzender.
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