Reviews

Reviews: Bach and Schönberg

09.02.2009

[...] The Nederlands Kamerkoor has now discovered an ideal setting for Schönberg’s music. It is a programme in which four of Bach’s motets form the main ingredient – or at least at first sight. In actual fact it is Schönberg who takes centre stage, even though his three a cappella works make up less than thirty percent of the concert. [...]
The contrast with Schönberg’s music is great. Above all his last completed work, De Profundis from 1950, coming as it does immediately after Bach’s Komm, Jesu, komm, takes on an extra edge and appears unruly, with its mixture of sung and spoken text plus the not particularly accessible Hebrew language.
And yet Schönberg’s music, with its contrapuntal techniques and hidden canons, has a deep inner kinship with that of Bach. In Dreimal tausend Jahre, which due to its short duration was sung twice, that connection becomes even clearer, because of the unforced way in which Schönberg combines musical lines to form strangely grating harmonies. And in the final piece on the programme, Friede auf Erden from 1907, in which Schönberg only just avoids crossing the border into atonality, Bach and Schönberg come unexpectedly close to one another, which becomes more apparent due to the skilful way in which Dijkstra moulds language and music into a single entity.

Frits van der Waa in the Volkskrant, 5 February 2009

Exceptional works around the theme of death

[...] Conductor Peter Dijkstra had the Nederlands Kamerkoor sing these works with a springy lightness, transparency, clear diction and many dynamic nuances. Very special and refined. He knew exactly where the accents should be placed. He also laid bare, as it were, the subtle structure. The sometimes complex melodic patterns which appeared in all the voices could be traced like the designs in Brussels lace. Nowhere did the sound of the choir become harsh.
All the dynamics were extremely well balanced, both between the two choirs and between the various voices. This produced many surprising and wonderful moments. [...]
As a result the concert was absolutely full of subtlety and natural shading, in both dynamics and sound.
This last aspect was even more apparent in the works which Schönberg wrote shortly after the Second World War. In his music the expression is to be found more in the colour of the harmonies. He also employs the voice differently. In his Psalm 30, sung in Hebrew, the choir is required to speak as well as to sing. His Dreimal tausend Jahre, which was performed twice, was sung with great restraint and refinement. Name a choir which can do this more beautifully than the Nederlands Kamerkoor. The church listened with bated breath. In the fiendishly difficult Friede auf Erden it was, alongside the many dynamic contrasts, above all the excellent timing in the melodic lines that made the performance such a memorable experience. A most impressive conclusion to an exceptionally fine concert.

Gerben Bergstra in the Friesch Dagblad, 5 February 2009

Kamerkoor: contrasts between Bach and Schönberg

[...] Personally I experienced the combination of Bach and Schönberg as something rich in contrast, in which, particularly before the interval, Schönberg’s atonality and colourful composition was ‘consoled’, as it were, by the tonality of Bach. Thus the motet ‘Jesu meine Freude’ BWV 227, following the unruly ‘De Profundis’ en ‘Dreimal tausend Jahre’ by Schönberg, came as balm for the soul. After the interval [the repeat performance of] ‘Dreimal tausend Jahre’ opus 50a by Schönberg suggested that it had more in common with Bach in terms of atmosphere, seeking as it does above all to create intimacy and tranquillity. A particularly well-performed piece with some fine examples of word painting in the music, in which the long harmonic lines subtly alter in colour.
One could hear that Peter Dijkstra’s conducting was calling on the collective memory of the Nederlands Kamerkoor. Naturalness in singing and interpretation, crisp articulation and taut rhythm, supported by the warm legato of the organ, played by Siebe Henstra, and the cello of Lucia Swarts.  [...]

Ingrid Metz in the Leeuwarder Courant, 5 February 2009