Nino Gvetadze, in her third year of running the festival, chose the theme Microcosmos. She engagingly used video clips to talk about the programmes, a useful device with which her sunny and gentle nature may well attract an ever growing audience, a vital element in a climate where more and more right leaning politics across Europe increasingly seek to cut the arts. ArtsTalk’s Deputy Editor Astrid BURCHARDT was there and here are her reviews, in reverse chronological order . . .
30th July – DER DOPPELGÄNGER in the Mandelezaal
For our final visit to the Festival the menu consisted of Robert Schumann’s piano quintet and six of Franz Schubert’s Lieder from Schwanengesang, written in 1828.
Schwanengesang or Swan song – who doesn’t know the meaning of the term? Franz Schubert (1810 – 1856) was said to have written six hundred songs. He was dying as he penned the last notes of this piece. As many of his friends, weakened by syphilis, he died young of typhoid. His total loss of hope is undoubtedly reflected in this work. In just four lines of Das Meer he says his souls is dying from longing, but just two lines later he condemns a woman who has poisoned him with her tears. The push-and-pull of lightness, melancholy and in places even a sort of rage were his later hallmark. Was Schubert bi-polar or was this the syphilis speaking?
The song Der Doppelgänger has an almost Russian style melancholic flavour, a scene late at night, in which Schubert sees his own ghost staring woefully at a house where once lived his long lost love. He may have been referring to the old belief that seeing one’s alter ego presages death. Goethe too had written about encountering himself in a dramatic early morning daze. Are dissociation or encounters with an alter-ego more common in high-functioning artists?
The ever brilliant baritone Thomas Oliemans, who himself has a Delft Chamber Music directorship under his belt, is something of a Schubert Lieder specialist. In Der Doppelgänger, a song heavy with regret, longing and loss, Oliemans transformed before our very eye into the broken man standing in the darkness.
Again, I much enjoyed Finghin Collins performance as he curled into his piano at the most dramatic moments. I am often in awe when I watch musicians and am reminded of the 12th century calligraphist-monk, secretly inserting his complaint at the back of a book: “It is not just the fingers that write, it is the whole body that aches.” After the concert Finghin Collins graciously reassured me that the pronunciation of his first name was Fin-in.
Robert Schumann’s piano quintet, written in 1842, formed the second part of tonight’s program. Schumann was a great innovator. It was apparently his idea to add a piano to a quartet – and the quintet was born.
It is always wonderful to get some background information in the excellent program notes. Initially, Clara Schumann was to take to the piano, but, about to give birth to her second child, she was replaced by Mendelsohn who subsequently exerted an audible influence on this work.
Nino Gvetadze took to the piano, accompanying the Arethusa Quartet: Daniel Rowland, a riveting first violin, Floor Le Coultre, second violin, Maja Bogdanovic on cello and, last but not least, Rachel Weisz look-alike Dana Zemtsov, viola. She was a delight to watch, her face expressing pure joy of the music.
28th July – HUIS VOL GEHEIMEN (House Full of Secrets) in the Mandelezaal
There is no doubt that Festival supremo Nino Gvetadze has a great sense of humour and tonight’s very entertaining programme showed it in spades.
John Cage’s Living Room Music (1940) was ‘played’ from a table loaded with household objects – packets of cereal or rice, tins, pots, jars placed amidst an old radio and an ancient microwave. All served as percussive instruments for Joey Marijs, Niels Meliefste and, very earnestly by Nino herself, shaking a yoghurt pot and a tin. Georgy Kovalev, sporting cool dark shades, drummed a huge cardboard box. And who would have thought that even a large carrot drumming on the old microwave and a packet of dry pasta could make music?
My favourite section in Cage’s piece was Nino’s reading of Gertude Stein’s poem The World is Round, accompanied by rhythmical, non-sensical whirring and squeaking sounds from her companions, rather like Antonin Artaud whose filmed reciting of his Lettrist poem I once had to ‘translate’ in London.
Leonard Bernstein ‘s La Bonne Cuisine (1947) continued on the theme of the house and home. Performed in English, the excellent soprano Nikki Treurniet sang four recipes with appropriate humour – the words on-i- on, rai-sins or co-ri-ander can sound just a musical and poetic as any other. During one song titled Are you too proud to serve your friends an oxtail stew? two ladies entered the hall with a terrine and offered spectators unfortunate (or lucky) enough, a spoonful of said oxtail stew. Hilarious.
Franz Xaver Wolfgang Mozart (1791 – 1844) Sonata for Violin and Piano in F major (1811) kicked off the concert. Of Amadeus Mozart’s six children only two survived, Franz Xaver being the youngest. Unlike his older brother, Carl Thomas, who chose to become a civil servant to escape comparison to his father, Franz Xaver braved it as a composer in his own right. His Sonata, though more classical but quite different from his father with its skipping, joyful tempo, fitted well into this menu of eccentric fun. It is always a pleasure to see musicians truly living and loving their music as with pianist Finghin Collins and violinist Noa Wildschut, tonight in a stunning wine red evening gown.
Bohuslav Martinu’s (1890 – 1959) 1927 La Revue de Cuisine for sextet, including fagot, trumpet, cello, violin, clarinet and piano was again very lively fun. With photography having replaced the need for figurative representation, the first half of the 20th century thirsted for ‘the new’ in music as in painting. Martinu’s compositions share much with painters Kandinsky, Malevich and Die Blaue Reiter group’s colourful canvases.
At the close all fourteen musicians were brought onto the stage and received a well-deserved standing ovation.
27th July – NIGHT AT THE MUSEUM in the Mandelezaal, Prinsenhof
The Night at the Museum concert was a resounding success, thanks to a little imagination. It was a brilliant evening, imagined as an old fashioned intimate salon concert. It was based on the tradition of music being played in private houses where composers often tried out their new works among friends/colleagues before presenting them in public. The stage was arranged around the grand piano with a couple of comfortable sofas, a few chairs and a coffee table where Nino Gvetadze installed all the evening’s musicians, representing family and friends. It worked beautifully.
On the menu were works by Gioachino Rossini, Franz Schubert, Frédéric Chopin, master of atonal music Anton von Webern, Franz Liszt and Johann Strauss Jr.. A special treat were the arrangements by early 20th century atonal composer Arnold Schönberg. He had his fun with Rossini’s Overture to the Barber of Seville and Johann Strauss’ normally sugary Rosen aus dem Süden from which he successfully, and not without a little wickedness, managed to scrape off a good portion of said sugar – delightful.
Bert Mooiman, appearing with his harmonium, told us few entertaining little anecdotes that added to the relaxed evening. For me the outstanding performance came from Finghin Collins (don’t ask how the Irish pronounce his first name). His performance of Chopin’s Ballade Nr.4 in F minor was simple riveting.
After the concert we were invited to stroll around the adjacent Prinsenhof Museum to look at the pictures and to be entertained by young musicians who popped up around every corner, playing everything from Vivaldi to Piazolla.
OPENING CONCERT at the Mandelzaal 26th July
‘What can you still find to say about classical music?’ a friend wondered when I told him I would write about the 2024 Delft Chamber Music Festival. Many see classical music as if preserved in aspic, forever repeated. They are unaware that there is new work and much can be drawn from juxtaposing it with older work to instill new and fresh meaning.
The perfect example of this is Bartok’s Mikrokosmos for Violons, Viola and Cello, written a hundred years ago. He used classical methods to write this thoroughly modern music, tonight performed with high voltage vigor by Noa Wildschut, Tatiania Samouil (violins), Georgy Kovalev (viola) and Adolfo Guetiérrez Arenas (cello). Lenneke Ruiters provided some fine soprano singing of a beautiful Hungarian folk tune, unfortunately out of my vision as she did not reach the stage until the last couple of bars.
If you were not in the audience tonight, Bartok’s Microcosmos defies description, so try to listen to it by some other means.
Bartok was preceded by American Terry Riley’s Sunrise of the Planetary Dream Collector (1980) with a voice-over by an astronaut whose name I unfortunately did not catch. Riley works in the neoclassical style, one removed from Philip Glass and Steve Reich but a little more accessible.
Though it seems unfair to pick one musician out, it was impossible not to be impressed by Noa Wildschut’s playing. Noa was a child prodigy and tonight one could easily see the reason why. Starting the violin aged four and bestriding the stage of the Amsterdam Concertgebouw at the age of only seven, for me at least, she dominated Bartok’s pieces, her slight figure producing incredibly energetic music that twanged my every musical nerve.
To close the programme Nino Gvetadze joined the quartet on piano to add much pace and gravitas to Johannes Brahms beautiful Piano Quintet in Fmin.
Altogether a very successful and promising opening of this year’s festival.
MARKTCONCERT
The free Marktconcert was very well attended as usual, luckily with fine weather. However, there was a change from previous years when it had been used as a kind of sampler/preview of the Festival. Although here the programme offered works from Mendelsohn, Mozart, Anton Webern, Alban Berg and Erich Korngold, among others, we were surprised to see just one orchestra on stage throughout, augmented by Nino Gvetadze and soprano Lenneke Ruiters. The orchestra itself, the Ciconia Consort under the baton of Dick van Gasteren, was the main event. There was something for everyone with pieces ranging from the beautiful Marietta’s Lied from Korngold’s Die Tote Stadt to the crowd pleasing Franz Léhar’s Vilja Lied from The Merry Widow to round off the event in the shadow of the Delft’s imposing Nieuwe Kerk. A good time was had by one and all!
Photo by Melle MEIVOGEL
The Delft Chamber Music Festival continues until 2nd August.
