Concertzender Newsletter

Editorial

Crooners and Claxons, Jansons and Grolleman

A new chairman, new ideas, and a new decade in front of us, we at the Concertzender are absolutely ready for it. So a lot of attention this month for new things.

From innovation to technique and avant-garde. After the windmachine, the whip and the typewriter the claxon makes its bow in music at the start of the twenties. The car you needed for that had already been invented which helped a lot. You can hear them racing through Paris in the 20’s and the bars including the original version in Gershwins An American in Paris, tracked down by Thijs Bonger.

Thea Derks explains 'Entartete Musik' and you’ll get an exclusive look behind the monastery walls of Puglia. On Sunday evening 19th January Bob Rusche covers another great innovator, radio person Arjen Grolleman, founder of X-Rated.

Don’t forget Beethoven, one of the greatest innovators in musical history. And the Palace of Nostalgia about the erotic consequences of good microphones. Want to know more? Enjoy Sjaak Rodenburg’s long read and lock up your daughters on 11th January. And there’s more, as we bring on Benny Goodman, who blew Carnegie Hall away 82 years ago… and you too, if you tune in on 25th January!

Sunday 19th January 2020

Theme: Crosslinks

X-Rated honours Arjen Grolleman

Faithful listeners know it already: every episode of X-Rated is dedicated to Arjen Grolleman. This January it will be 10 years ago that Arjen passed away due to a tragic accident at home. His pupil, soulmate, successor and partner in crime Bob Rusche honours Arjen Grolleman during a special episode of X-Rated on 19th January.

Paved the way
Grolleman started X-Rated, which began on the legendary radio station Kink FM in the first week of 1995 with Arjen as its sound and face. After Kink FM folded X-Rated moved to the Concertzender, where it plays every Sunday evening from 21.00 to 23.00. Bob Rusche has been involved since 1999 in this programme about unique electronics, ambient and avant-garde. During the episode of X-Rated on Sunday 19th January Bob will be remembering Arjen, with some of his favourite musical pieces.

Theme: Contemporary Music

Mariss Jansons in The Last Century

Mariss Jansons passed away in the last week of November. The Lithuanian conductor was Chief conductor of the Koninklijk Concertgebouworkest from 2004 to 2015.

Mariss Janssons Jansons was born in Riga and studied violin and conducting at the Conservatorium in Leningrad. He started his conducting career there as assistant to Jevgeni Mravinsky. Six years later he became conductor of the Oslo Philharmonic Orchestra, which under his leadership developed into an orchestra of international calibre. And from there from 2004 the KCO Amsterdam, as successor to Chailly. In 2015 Jansons – a heart patient for many years – had to resign his position for health reasons.

Jansons plays Berio
Jansons repertoire was primarily the familiar romantic repertoire. There were also exceptions, which we’re playing in the Last Century on 23rd January 2020. Then you can hear among other things the 4 Dédicaces by Luciano Berio. Pierre Boulez gave this name to 4 orchestral miniatures which Berio wrote between 1978 and 1989 . You can also hear Moloch by Peter-Jan Wagemans, one of the few pieces by a Dutch composer which Jansons recorded.

Theme: Classical Music

Beethoven Reminder #1

Don’t forget
From January 2020 onwards, every working day between 11.00 and 12.00, there’s Beethoven on the Concertzender.

The first episode airs on 1st January 10.00 to 11.00!

Saturday 25th January 2020

Theme: Jazz

Concertzender Live Jazz: Carnegie Hall 1938

We’re keeping the name Concertzender Live, but the content will change somewhat in 2020. From January the programme will be playing live recordings from the rich history of jazz. We’re kicking off with one of the most legendary concerts of all time: the concert which clarinettist and band leader Benny Goodman gave in January 1938 in Carnegie Hall, New York.

The concert is alas too long to broadcast in one hour. But programme maker Jaap van de Klomp made a nice selection of music from the concert. In 2020 every 4th Saturday of the month we’re broadcasting a historic jazz concert, as well as many Live Club dates !

Listen on 25 januari 2020
to Benny Goodman at Carnegie Hall (16 januari 1938).

Saturday 11th January 2020

Theme: Jazz

Seduced by a whisper: the crooners

If you want to be heard you have to raise your voice. And if you have a loud voice you can command troops on the battlefield without a megaphone. But seducers go gently, speaking softly, which leads to the best way to do that: singing a song.

From 1925: you can do it softly
In 1925 a revolution in popular music took place: de Victor Talking Machine Company introduced the electric microphone. From now on singers making a record no longer had to shout into a huge horn which caused a needle to groove sound waves into a wax disc. Now with the much more subtle microphone singers could concentrate on the interpretation. Another benefit: singers with softer voices could be easily recorded.

Devilish evil
So started a new, relaxed and sensual way of singing, with a new wave of vocalists: the crooners. Love songs became amazingly intimate. So the moralists immediately pursued famous crooners calling them ‘a devils evil’ and the new singers as degenerate members.

Theme: Early Music

Early Music Festival 2019 in January

On Friday 10 January 2020 we are broadcasting two concert recordings that were made during the Early Music Festival 2019. Both concerts took place on 30 August 2019 in the Hertz in TivoliVredenburg: For Voice and Psalterium by Il Dolce Conforto and Sonatas for Recorder by La Cicala.

Behind the Walls, Intra muros
The programme For Voice and Psalterium gives us a glimpse of life behind the walls of two unique convents in Apulia and Naples. The nuns who lived here made music of a high quality, often more secular than spiritual. Il Dolce Conforto, under the musical leadership of Franziska Fleischanderl on psalterium, perform fragments from virtuoso Passion cantatas that were written for the nuns by some of the best composers in Naples. These 18th century cantatas for the Passion are surprisingly secular. You hear them sung by the Swiss soprano Marie Lys.

La Cicala demonstrate in their concert that a lot of music was composed for the recorder in Naples. In the concert Sonatas for Recorder they play music by four composers who were active in Naples around 1730: Francesco Mancini, Domenico Sarro, Leonardo Leo and Pietro Lullj.

Theme: Early Music

Genre: Baroque

Caravaggio and the art of the madrigal

On Friday, January 24, 2020 we broadcast a recording of a concert from the Early Music Festival 2019: Caravaggio and the art of the madrigal performed by Urgent Music and the Spanish soprano Nuria Rial. We will also hear a recording from 2013 of a homage to Renaissance composer Salomone Rossi by Profeti della Quinta.

Caravaggio is the most famous early Baroque painter of Italy and he lived and worked in Naples for a short time around 1600. Baroque violinist Veronika Skuplik, her ensemble Urgent Music and Nuria Rial bring a program based around this great master with madrigals and instrumental music from d’India, Trabaci, Strozzi and Falconieri.

Salomone Rossi
Salomone Rossi from Mantua wrote both secular and spiritual music, but the emphasis was on the secular. In addition to his famous collection of psalms and prayers in Hebrew, he published four books with instrumental music and no fewer than nine books with Italian secular works, including madrigals, canzonets, balletti and madrigaletti.

Our new chairman: Stan Paardekoper

The Concertzender starts 2020 with a new chairman: Stan Paardekooper. Stan is anything but a stranger to the Dutch music and media world, since he has been an active director of foundations, orchestras and festivals in the Classical Music world for years. But who is Stan, and how does he see the Concertzender?

In my younger years I was trained as a pianist at the Muzieklyceum Amsterdam, I don’t play much anymore. I have also always sung with the Toonkunstkoor Amsterdam, the Hoofdstadkoor and with project choirs such as the Brabantkoor and Opera in Ahoy. I have been going to the Concertgebouw since I was 8 years old, when the 'Premium of the Month Club' allowed us to go to concerts relatively cheaply. My musical orientation is therefore classical, through both upbringing and my experience over the years. My professional career, of course, was also with classical music. But my interests in the classical sector are broad, with an emphasis on vocal and opera.

I compare the Concertzender with an specialist music store, where you are guided and assisted by enthousiastic programme makers and editors.

Theme: Contemporary Music

An Ox on the Roof about Entartete Musik

On 5 January 2020, the Concertzender broadcasts episode 10 of An Ox on the Roof, a series compiled and presented by Thea Derks. It is the third and final episode about Degenerate Music. The program is loosely based on Thea’s book Een os op het dak: moderne muziek na 1900 in vogelvlucht, an introduction to 20th-century music in everyday language.

Schulhoff and Bosmans
In episode 9 we broadcast the second part of the opera Flammen by the Czech-Jewish composer Erwin Schulhoff (1894-1942). He was one of the composers whose music was classified as 'Degenerate' by the Nazis. He completed his opera Flammen, inspired by the figure of Don Juan, in 1929, but it did not premiere in Prague until 1932. In episode 10 you will hear the third and final part of this idiosyncratic opera.

After 1940, the controls on Jewish composers in the Netherlands were also increased. Those who refused to register at the Kultuurkamer were unable to work as professional musicians. The half-Jewish composer / pianist Henriëtte Bosmans (1895-1952) refused and was banned in 1942. She performed during the rest of the war during so-called 'black evenings', clandestine home concerts that were organised in secret.

Theme: Classical Music

Beethoven reminder #2: prize draw

Inevitable: the first competition in Beethoven Year 2020 is also about Ludwig, whose music has been widely used in films. The scenes from Stanley Kubrick’s A Clockwork Orange, with the 2nd part from the 9th symphony, are famous.