Editorial |
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Thursdays August 6th, 20th and 27th 2020Theme: Contemporary MusicComposer: Maurice Ravel |
Meanwhile, one hundred years ago…The Heerenveen football club was founded. The socialists split and a new faction called themselves ‘communists’. 1920 was not one of the leanest years in music history. Think Pulcinella, by Igor Stravinsky. Dmitri Sjostakovitsj was only 14 years old but composed five preludes for piano and made his debut as composer. Maurice Ravel demonstrated the possibilities of a waltz in his ‘Poème choréographique pour orchestre’: La Valse. And Darius Milhaud put an ox on the roof in his Le boeuf sur le toît. The series also includes more obscure works. For example, an orchestral suite from a satirical opera by Leos Janácek with the remarkable title: Mister Broucek’s trips to the moon and to the 15th century. Broucek means ‘beetle’ in Czech. The main character is a crude landlord in Prague who has a series of fantastic adventures, mainly due to excessive drinking. Each programme in the series focuses on a different country or region. France, Russia, Central Europe, Germany and Austria have already been covered this year.
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Sunday August 2nd 2020Theme: Contemporary Music |
The Ox in times of Corona #5This month we are broadcasting part 17 in the series An Ox of the Roof by Thea Derks, a series inspired by her dutch book of the same title. The recent programmes in the series have featured music by Dutch composers in order to provide them with some support in these difficult times. This month the programme includes a recording of the song cycle The Open Road by Kate Moore, the Australian-Dutch composer who won the Matthijs Vermeulen Award in 2017. The programme closes with a piece by the American-Dutch composer Vanessa Lann. Her composition Is a Bell…. A Bell? for the Austrian pianist Isabel Ettenauer is unusual because it is written for two toy pianos. Compiled, edited and presented by Thea Derks. Listen:
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Every week-day from Monday 3rd August 2020Theme: Classical MusicComposer: Claude Debussy |
Composer of the month: Claude Debussy
Debussy is known today as one of the greatest innovators of the 19th century. However, in his early days, Debussy wrote many piano pieces to please the wealthy salon audience. These pieces were not overly experimental and perfectly playable for amateur musicians. That changed from the nineties, when Debussy increasingly used old composition techniques, whimsical shapes and both modal and other keys. His string quartet and liederen testify to this experimental approach. They are now established as standard repertoire, but at the time were considered radical and difficult to play, even for professional musicians. Our programmes this month focus especially on Debussy’s songs, in which he made use of the freedom of the French language and revealed his preference for an almost spoken style of singing. Composer of the month is broadcast every week-day from 16:00 to 15:00 CET starting from Monday 3 August.
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Sunday August 9th 2020Theme: Early MusicGenre: Baroque |
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Every Tuesday from August 4th 2020 (Missa) / Every Saturday from July 4th 2020 (Roaming)Theme: Early MusicGenre: Baroque |
Relaunch Missa etc.
In their own way, they will continue this series about religious music from Renaissance, Braroque and Classicial periods that Jan has left behind. Johan van Veen and Kees Koudstaal had also previously taken over Jan’s other series Roaming through the Baroque. The programmes have been renamed Roaming through the Middle Ages, Renaissance or Baroque, dependant on the period that is being featured in each programme and will continue to focus on the secular music from these periods. Listen:
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ColophonConcertzender
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Next newsletterThe next Concertzender newsletter will appear late August / early September. In the meantime, go to our website for the latest news
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Concertzender Newsletter August 2020 
The first aircraft took off from the Waalhaven airfield in Rotterdam. But what music was being composed exactly a century ago? We provide the answer to that question every month in our series The Last Century.
This month the composer of the month comes from Paris. Although Claude Debussy was born just west of that city, he spent most of his life there, a life that lasted from 1862 to 1918. Debussy died of colon cancer, while his beloved city was being shelled by German cannons.
100th Organ works
Jan Kruit, who died in October 2018, was one of the most productive programme makers at the Concertzender. In July 2020, almost two years after his death, we broadcast the final programme that he had produced for the series Missa etc.. However, this is not the end of Missa etc.. The programme makers Johan van Veen and Kees Koudstaal are taking over.
