News

Heavenly music around the turn of the year

28.01.2009

The concert in Rhoon was special in several respects. This location, a stone’s throw from Rotterdam, is unexpectedly picturesque: one moment you’re surrounded by the heavy industry of the Port of Rotterdam, and the next you find yourself in a distant past, with such delights as Rhoon’s tiny church and its castle. This is where the Nederlands Kamerkoor sang Haydn’s Nelson Mass in the formation which the composer had at his disposal for the work’s first performance: a tiny choir (thirteen singers) and a tiny orchestra (a handful of strings, organ, a few wind players and timpani.) This all took place within the context of a fine Haydn festival, and was accompanied by the Kölner Akademie and conducted by Michael Willens.

The changeover to the Doelen concert hall, a few kilometres to the north on the other side of the River Maas, could not have been greater. This was an out-and-out Christmas programme, with old and new Christmas music by Praetorius and Rutter, with the hall full to bursting: the first evening was open to the general public and the second to the many invited guests attending Rotterdam mayor Opstelten’s farewell concert. And with curtain calls for the choir!

At the start of the new year the same concert hall was somewhat less full but no less enthusiastic during yet another striking double bill, with before the interval Mozart’s enduringly beautiful swan song – his Requiem – with the NKK, and after the interval the Symphony of Psalms by Stravinsky, with a more than 80-strong Nederlands Concertkoor (and not with the NKK, as, strangely enough, one reviewer thought he had observed....) Frans Brüggen proved capable of bringing the two works surprisingly close together, both clearly delineated, full of contrast, like an earthly song of praise to eternity.

And finally back to Haydn, this time together with the Nederlands Kamerorkest and conductor Paul McCreesh in the Amsterdam Concertgebouw. Both choir and audience enjoyed themselves – even if with Haydn, as the Volkskrant wrote,
heaven doesn’t open till rather late on (as opposed to the situation with Bach, according to the reviewer.) The Nederlands Kamerkoor once again provided the jubilation to this heavenly music.

[LS]