Dutch composers at the Holland Festival 2010

Unlike last year, when the 70th birthday of Louis Andriessen formed an unavoidable centripetal force, Dutch composers play a comparatively small role at the Holland Festival 2010 - though certainly not an insignificant one.

One of the main programmes, the performance of all of Beethoven’s symphonies by Jos van Immerseel and Anima Eterna, starts with a remarkable new work by Martijn Padding. Padding (1956), who enters into dialogue with music from the past in nearly all is works, has written an overture based on the score and orchestration of Beethoven’s Prometheus Overture.

Three of the six ‘Dutch’ composers featuring on the festival are actually not of Dutch origin, but they are building up their career here. The Greek composer Calliope Tsoupaki (1963), for example, has lived and worked in the Netherlands for over two decades. Two years ago her St Luke Passion was a great success at the Holland Festival and in this year’s edition her Greek Love Songs will be premiered. Tsoupaki originally wrote these songs for the Greek singer Nena Venetsanou, but she rewrote them for the Egidius Quartet and the Rotterdam Philharmonic Brass Soloists. These musicians will also perform some new compositions by her which are based on love poems by Kaváfis. The poems will be recited by Poet Laureate Ramsey Nasr.

In the remarkable ‘Bach Pavilion’ at the Gashouder Westergasfabriek, designed by architect Zaha Hadid, Percussion Group The Hague will give a concert focussing on spatial research. The programme includes works by Alvin Lucier, James Tenney and Gérard Grisey. In addition three composers have been commissioned to write new works: the young Spanish composer who lives in the Netherlands, Abel Paúl (1984), the English-Dutch composer and trombone player, Richard Ayres (1965) and Rozalie Hirs (1965), who wrote a piece for metal instruments, such as the vibraphone and glockenspiel, and electronics. Within a sound stage of six speakers placed around the pavilion, which one could call ‘hyper stereo’ or ‘hexaphonic’, she experiments with the phenomenon ‘binaural beats’: minute differences between the signals which the listener receives through his left and right ear make the brain calculate an unheard additional signal. According to the composer, "The aim is to create a pulsating sea of waves and a meditative experience of time.” Hirs has based her composition on Tempus ex Machina by Grisey (also featuring on the programme) and Pléïades by Xenakis.

Besides all these new works the festival also features one of the most successful Dutch orchestral works from the last decade: Sinfonia (1972-1974) by Tristan Keuris (1946-1996) who died too young. Keuris received the Matthijs Vermeulen Prize for Sinfonia in 1975. The work will be performed by the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra conducted by David Robertson alongside the Dutch premiere of George Benjamin’s Duet and works by Ravel, Messiaen and Stravinsky.

Joep Stapel