Concertzender Newsletter

Weekdays from Monday 2 August 2021

Our August 2021 composer: Heinrich Schütz

Our August Composer of the Month is Heinrich Schütz (1585 – 1672), who will also be a big focus at the upcoming Early Music Festival. In one of the broadcasts about Schütz you will hear his St John Passion, which has a completely different structure from Johann Sebastian Bach’s.

Schütz was born in Saxony and studied in Kassel before travelling to Italy to study with Giovanni Gabrieli. This left him with a lifelong love for Italy. Schütz was mainly active as a composer in Dresden, writing for various noble and religious patrons. He was successful, both artistically and professionally, and turned down offers to work elsewhere.

One of Schütz’s greatest successes were his Musikalische Exequien (1636), commissioned by a noble patron on the occasion of his own death. Schütz produced a work that showed what he was capable of. This composition belongs to the best pieces produced by Protestant church music.

Friday 27 August to Sunday 5 September 2021

Theme: Early Music

Speaking of the 2021 Early Music Festival

After last year’s downsized edition, the Early Music Festival will be back at the end of August, as grand as can be. The festival takes place from Friday 27 August to Sunday 5 September in the centre of Utrecht. And the Concertzender Early Music Department will be focusing on this festival in a number of programmes. We have lined them all up for you.

Let us talk
The festival’s theme is: “Music speaks… Let’s Talk, Rhetoric in the Arts”. Music from the Renaissance and Baroque periods often harks back to the rhetoric and characters of classical antiquity.

The festival is devoted to rhetorical gestures, whether vocal, instrumental, physical, spoken or sung. And ultimately, it is all about the emotional impact of the music. The full programme can be found here.

At the festival and on Concertzender, we hear a lot of “speaking music”, such as French airs de cour, medieval music from Constantinople, La Pellegrina, a Masque by Pepusch, and also music by Buxtehude, Scheidt and, of course, J.S. Bach.

Theme: Jazz

Classic Jazz: Jack Hylton

Ate van Delden put together a programme for Classic Jazz with the Orchestra of English pianist and band leader Jack Hylton in mind. Born in Lancaster, 1892, Hylton started his musical life as a choirboy. In 1913 he ended up in London through travelling orchestras as a pianist assistant.

Six years later in 1919 the Original Dixieland Jazz Band, visiting from America, made their success. All sorts of English orchestras tried to get a piece of the pie, including the Queen’s Dance Orchestra with Hylton as a sitting pianist and arranger.

Hylton’s band records were selling really well, so the band would regularly be in the recording studio. Some records, like the Limehouse Blues, belong to the earliest performances kept on record. Jack Hylton’s band used to play many American repertoires, on which much focus in Classic Jazz. One special record that we have in our possession is a recording from Doo Dah Blues that was not published.

Before Friday 6 August 2021

Crowdfunding

Ranjani Nirosha is our new resident photographer. She has put up a crowdfunding to fund her new photo book. She portrays musicians and artists with a passion.

For Ranjani, bearer of a visual impairment, the art of light is very important. Her portraits are as a result very powerful, contrasting and full of colour. Her website features a couple of photos.

Dutch foundation Stichting ROER has put up a crowdfunding for her book. The funding period will run until 6 August 2021. Would you like to contribute? Visit Ranjani’s crowdfunding on Voor De Kunst.