Rachmaninov 2

There will be a Starter prior to this concert. You can attend this in the Swing on the second floor to the left of cloakroom. 

Jasper de Bock (2003)

One Minute Symphony: Good Day (2023)

Opening tonight is Dutch composition student Jasper de Bock in his One Minute Symphony, the collaboration between Residentie Orkest and Royal Conservatoire The Hague. Jasper looked for inspiration in the center of The Hague. He wanted to meet a street newspaper vendor, because you see them every day, yet you don't know them. Jasper spoke with Romanian Street News vendor Petru. With the help of our concertmaster Lucian-Leonard Raiciof as translator, Jasper got a picture of Petru's outlook on life and how he experiences his days and the passage of time on the streets. How Jasper transforms Petru's character and thoughts into music can be heard at the premiere of his One Minute Symphony "Good Day.

John Luther Adams (1953)

Piano concerto 'Prophecies of Stone' (2023) (Dutch premiere)

- Solitary Peaks

- Among Red Mountains

- Cold Mountain

- The Stone People Who Live in the Wind

Before his career as a composer, John Luther Adams (b. 1953) worked in conservation and was very active as a climate activist. He lived for many years in Alaska, but also lived remote in the tundra, on the coast or today in the New Mexico desert. His music is therefore imbued with his love of, and concern for, these primal landscapes.

It began with a fascination with bird sounds and the wind. But today, unheard voices of the earth, such as vibrations of sunlight, seismic tremors, solar winds and the deepest sounds from beneath the ground are also part of Adams' vocabulary. For his orchestral work Become Ocean, in which he took the dramatic scenario of rising sea levels as his subject, he received the Pulitzer Prize in 2014.

The new piano concerto "Prophecies of Stone," which Adams wrote for the Residentie Orkest and Factory International in Manchester, is set in the mountains of Alaska, the area where he lived and worked for many years. The music exudes awe and admiration for the mountain landscape while at the same time lamenting what we are losing. Sometimes the music stands still like the landscape itself, but if you zoom in further, everything appears to be in motion. A musical world of successive fifths and tone clusters, naturally evoke a kind of tension and vitality; musical languages reminiscent of American composers like Morton Feldman.

The first part depicts the chilly ice fields and glaciers from which rise so-called "nunataks," lonely rock points, angular and in great contrast to their snowy surroundings. Once the ice melts, the nunataks are left lonely, isolated and vulnerable. Of a different color and texture are the Red Mountains in the next section. These Alaskan mountains are full of ancient fossils, reminders of past life and also prophecy for our future.

The third movement gave the composer a motto from the Chinese poet Hanshan (literally "Cold Mountain"), a mysterious hermit from the ninth century whose only surviving poems were written on the rocks in the mountains he called home.

The mountain I live on nobody knows
inside the clouds
it's always deserted.

For as long as man has existed, he has created stone monuments that mark his relationship with special places. The Inuit in the Arctic call them "tukiliit": stone people who live in the wind. With these silent witnesses of respectful relationship with the earth, Adams wants to convey a hopeful message to new generations in the final section of his Prophecies of Stone. The work was first performed last summer in Manchester by Ralph van Raat and the BBC Philharmonic Orchestra.

At intermission we will serve a free drink.

Sergei Rachmaninov (1873-1943)

Symphony no. 2 in e, op. 27 (1906-1907)

- Largo - Allegro moderato

- Allegro molto

- Adagio

- Allegro vivace

As a symphonist, Sergei Rachmaninov had a rough start. At the premiere of his First Symphony in 1897, he faced merciless criticism; the performance was said to be comparable to "all the Biblical plagues added together. A conductor who showed up drunk didn't help matters. It drove Rachmaninov into depression and for three years he did not write a note.

Rachmaninov devoted himself to conducting and performing as a concert pianist, which quickly rose his star. To escape from the busy life in Moscow for a while, he decided to move to Dresden with his young family in 1906. The following year, to his surprise, a friend of his received the message, "A month ago, or more, I really completed a symphony! In sketch." After a laborious elaboration of the orchestration, Rachmaninov finally conducted the first performance of his Second Symphony in St. Petersburg.

It is a grand one-hour symphony that begins dark and mysterious, with a musical motto in the cellos and basses that recurs as a unifying element in all four movements. In the scherzo, Rachmaninov also incorporates the melody of the Dies irae from the Gregorian Mass of the Dead, a theme the composer used more often. For many, the Adagio is the highlight, with wonderful soundscapes and lyrical solos by violin, clarinet, cor anglais and others. As in many Russian symphonies, all the important themes (or memories of them) from the earlier movements recur in the monumental finale, as the apotheosis of an hour of music. After the debacle of his earlier symphony, to his great relief his Second symphony was awarded the prestigious Glinka Prize.

Frans Boendermaker