Concertzender Newsletter

Editorial

Concertzender in April

If your favourite newsletter had an employee of the month, it would be Emanuel Overbeeke in April 2021. You know him as a tireless producer of the programme Composer of the Month, which we broadcast on weekdays between 4 and 5 pm.

Recently, publisher Prominent published Emanuel’s book about the Netherlands and Beethoven. ‘Die Geschöpfe des Emanuels’ was almost immediately received as a standard work on Ludwig van Beethoven’s reception and performance practice in the Netherlands, who remarkably never made it to the Composer of the Month. You can’t have it all.

But you can, if you answer the question correctly, you have a chance of winning one of the two signed copies of Nederland en Beethoven. We won’t make it easy because Beethoven was indomitable. For this newsletter, the author and programme maker grants us a one-off glimpse into his working methods and frame of mind.

And we have German-Italian music from Russia by Michael Glinka and structural hard bop powerhouses Ben van den Dungen and Jarmo Hogendijk. Listen to the Palace of Nostalgia on 17 April at 8 pm; a full hour of jazzy film music.

See you next month!

Saturday 17th April 2021

Theme: Jazz

Ben and Jarmo in the house of hard bop

The year was 1985. The first prize of the NOS Meervaart Jazz Podium went to the Ben van den Dungen/Jarmo Hoogendijk Quintet. The hard bop formation conducted by Ben (sax) and Jarmo (trumpet) was a sensation and immediately generated wide interest.

They toured through the Netherlands, Europe, the US, and Canada. Drummer Eric Ineke – also your programme maker – was part of this quintet’s core composition, just like pianist Rob van Bavel and bass player Harry Emmery.

Albums were released in the early 90s: Speak Up, Run from your Wife, Double Dutch. Both wind players wrote most of the compositions. Home-grown energetic hard bop!

Listen:
Saturday 17 April 2021, 5 pm, House of Hard Bop (Eric Ineke).

Theme: Classical Music | Contemporary Music | Early Music

Emanuel’s choice

A regular feature of Concertzender is Emanuel Overbeeke’s choice of the composer of the month. Nobody knows exactly how long he has been doing this or felt like looking it up. And what does it matter anyway; content is what it should be all about. It’s time for a conversation about autonomy, biography and how to select composers.

Emanuel, how do you go about selecting your Composer of the Month?
“I have several criteria: sometimes a special occasion (birthday, year of death, event), but I also look if the composer in question has already been heard, if there are enough interesting recordings available (several broadcasts will have to be filled, by others as well), and, of course, personal preference. I do try to conceal the latter somewhat. They must be good enough; quality is more important to me than style.”

How do you feel about the relationship between music and a composer’s life?
“Someone’s life doesn’t define their work, but it can make certain creative choices understandable. If someone wants to interpret a work as purely biographical, or if an artist wants to be primarily biographical, I would say: write an autobiography or a song about private matters. The best art transcends the circumstances under which it is created. I personally don’t judge by recognisability. With a lot of art, we don’t know what the creator intended or where and how it was made, but we do know if it makes us feel a certain way. My favourite artists always give non-conforming answers that captivate, even if you don’t know the context and customs. Biography and context are often crucial to contemporaries, but the better an artist and the greater the difference in time, the more attention the personality gets.”

Theme: Classical Music

Composer of the Month: Glinka

Glinka was born in a small village near Smolensk in 1804 and died 53 years later in Berlin. His honorary title ‘fountainhead of Russian classical music’ is a bit much, but Glinka was indeed the first Russian composer who could compete with his famous western colleagues.

The Glinka method was to sprinkle typical Russian elements over western templates. Glinka received a very western-orientad education. Even though he did receive his education in St. Petersburg first, this training was modelled in a western manner. Then, Glinka travelled through Europe and stayed in Milan and Berlin.

Glinka was part of the upper class, his music reflected that. The song and chamber music were part of the aristocracy; they liked to listen to short pieces in the living room with comprehensible shapes, simple harmonies, and a splash of sentimentality. Glinka capitalised on that by combining German style with an Italian sense of bel canto. This eventually led to his most famous pieces of music: the operas Ruslan and Ludmilla and A Life for the Tsar. These works were immediately included in the Russian standards catalogue, which only changed after the shift in power in 1917.

An ode to the tsar wasn’t a good idea in Russia after 1917, but the music was way too popular to ignore. Now what?

Theme: Classical Music

Prize draw: Beethoven’s penultimate words

To conclude this month’s newsletter, we have a contest. We’ll give away a signed copy of Emanuel Overbeeke’s hot off the press standard work about Beethoven in the Netherlands to two lucky winners; you only have to answer the question correctly.

This time, we have upped the ante considerably. Your challenge: who or what did Beethoven quote on his deathbed, prior to complaining about a bunch of wine bottles being delivered late and putting a fermata on his life?

Please mail your answer to Concertzender prize draw before 15 April. Correspondence is quite impossible.