In the turbulent 1960-70s, it was almost a given that artists and composers were socially and politically engaged. The best-known Dutch example is the opera Reconstruction, which saw five ‘Nutcrackers’ deliver a fierce indictment of US imperialism. In the course of the full-length performance, a statue was erected for Cuban resistance fighter Che Guevara. Meira Warshauer In the following decades, composers turned increasingly inward, but this is gradually changing. The British Kate Honey, for instance, wrote her Shell Symphony in 2017 to convince the Concertgebouw to stop its sponsorship by th ..read more

Karmit Fadael started out as a violinist but is now a much sought-after composer. She regularly appears on radio and TV and has written an impressive number of works for renowned ensembles and festivals. On 11 April, her Violin Concerto Mimesis will be premiered at Muziekgebouw aan ‘t IJ in Amsterdam. She composed it for Pieter van Loenen, on a commission from the North Netherlands Orchestra. The following two days it will be performed in De Oosterpoort Groningen and TivoliVredenburg Utrecht. Karmit Fadael was born in 1996 in Treuchtlingen, a town south of Nuremberg, but grew up in Sneek. On h ..read more

Engagement in the arts is back. In 2017, Kate Honey composed her Shell Symphony in protest against the Amsterdam Concertgebouw, which was sponsored by the polluting oil giant. Seven years later, Ellen Reid, composer in residence of the Concertgebouw Orchestra, wrote The Shell Trial. This opera was inspired by a play about the lawsuit against Shell in 2021, in which the court ruled that Shell must drastically reduce its CO2 emissions by 2030. Unfortunately, Reid and her librettist Roxie Perkins chose to radically expand the number of characters, add a children’s choir and a group of elders, and ..read more

Every so often, a lost piece of music turns up and the entire press eagerly pounces on the new find. Yet the rediscovery of the opera Fausto by Louise Bertin seemed to elude their attention, apart from some reviews of the superb CD recording Palazzetto Bru Zane dedicated to this masterpiece. The first scenic performance in nearly two centuries at the Aalto-Theater in Essen last January went largely unnoticed. A friend alerted me to this production, and the live performance I attended on 9 March once again underscored the dramatic eloquence of Bertin’s music. Mirko Roschkowski, Almas Svilpa &am ..read more

The AVROTROSVrijdagconcert has long programmed lesser-known works from the classical canon as well as championing Dutch composers. On Friday, March 8, the Radio Philharmonic Orchestra will play the world premiere of Ballade by Mathilde Wantenaar. As always, the concert will be broadcast live on NPO Klassiek. Born in Amsterdam in 1993, Wantenaar has won many awards, the most recent being the Buma Classical Award 2023. It was handed to her in the Konzerthaus Wien this last December, prior to the world premiere of her Accordion Concerto. She composed this for Vincent van Amsterdam and the Vienna ..read more

Lera Auerbach (b. 1973, Chelyabinsk) grew up under Soviet dictatorship, but decided to trade it for the free West during a concert tour of America in 1991; a few months later, the Soviet Union fell apart. Auerbach continued to live in New York, building an increasingly successful career from there. She is by no means unknown in The Netherlands either, thanks in part to the Friday Evening Concert series of the Dutch broadcasting union and the Netherlands Chamber Choir. Last October her fiftieth birthday was celebrated in The Hague. On that occasion, the Delta Piano Trio released a CD entirely ..read more

‘I return to life! Oh joy!’ sings Adela Zaharia at the end of La traviata. Unassailable she stands on her tombstone, her arm raised to heaven as if she were the American Statue of Liberty. Dismay among the bystanders, as she clearly breathes her last with these words. The orchestra puts an end to her suffering with some sturdy accents and terrifying drum rolls, after which the audience erupts in a deafening howl and whistle that almost shakes the Amsterdam Music Theatre to its foundations. La Traviata, (c) Ben van Duin, Dutch National Opera 2024 Rightly so, as the Romanian soprano puts in a ph ..read more

Attracted by the progressive musical climate, countless aspiring composers found their way to one of the Dutch conservatoires. Among them the Greek Calliope Tsoupaki (Piraeus, 1963) and the Scottish Geneviève Murphy (Dundee, 1988). Why did they come to the Netherlands and how has this impacted their artistry? A double interview I wrote for the French internet magazine Hémisphère son. When and why did you decide to move to the Netherlands? Tsoupaki I decided to leave Greece in the 1980s, the ‘Golden Age’ of contemporary music, with great composers such as Louis Andriessen. I wanted to explore t ..read more

Recently the new music label Elsewhere Music released the CD Slow Roads with eight organ pieces by Ivan Vukosavljević (1986). I got to know the Serbian/Dutch composer in 2017, when I interviewed him prior to the opening concert of the Gaudeamus Music Week, as one of the five nominees for the Gaudeamus Music Award. Although his piece Atlas Slave did not make it to the finish line (Aart Strootman won), it did attract attention: ‘In Atlas Slave, Ivan Vukosavljević builds a hypnotic sound world from a guitar played with a bow’, I opined at the time. Vukosavljević studied composition at the Univer ..read more

In the opera The World’s Wife, British poet Carol Ann Duffy retells ancient stories from a female perspective; her compatriot Tom Green wrote the music. Dutch Jorinde Keesmaat signed on to direct and the Ragazze Quartet managed to snare American baritone Lucia Lucas for the lead role. She came out as trans in 2013. The show is performed at Muziekgebouw aan ‘t IJ on 11 January 2024. Lucia Lucas @Dorien Hein The World’s Wife began as a song cycle for string quartet and soprano and had its world premiere in Wales in 2017. The ever-adventurous Ragazze Quartet suggested turning it into an opera and ..read more