Premiere Bergidylle by the Trio Amare | Willem Wander van Nieuwkerk

Trio Amare is now touring Holland with the new Bergidylle! Romantic chamber music about the self’s searching the other in the most remote places, ironically to find itself but other than expected…with video!.For the Trio Amare (soprano Sabine Wüthrich, clarinettist Céleste Zewald and pianist Daniel Kramer) I wrote a 25 minute song cycle on a set of poems by Heine, the Bergidylle. I finished it just before New Years Eve 2010-2011 and the trio is about to embark on a small tour for the next months:

January 20 Den Bosch: De Azijnfabriek, 12.30
www.podiumazijnfabriek.nl

January 23: Heerhugowaard 11.30
www.muziekkring.nl

February 19 Rhenen: de Korenwinde 20.00

May 31 Amsterdam, Boekmanzaal 12.30

June 19 Holten: Concerten op de Deel, 16.00

A very special location!

Recorded below is the 2nd movement as it sounded in the beautiful town of Rhenen on 19 Februari 2011 (my 56th birthday). The idyllic Dutch town of Rhenen, situated at the foot of the Dutch Grebbeberg in a curve of the river Rhine, provided appropriate surroundings for what I believe may well be a beautiful addition to the lyrical repertoire for this line up.
Jan van Goyen famously captured Rhenen in his painting of 1648.

I am looking forward to this trio’s complete recording of the piece later this year.

About me

Musical beauty and simplicity are my aim. My guiding principle is the classical European tradition. Folk music, church music and Early Music are the sources to which I return to seek new melodic beauty. I value musical craftsmanship and intuition highly. Musicians are my first audience. It is their virtuosic interplay, comic or dramatic, but always emotionally charged, that is the musical theater my music presents to the listener. The sounds I cherish most are those that through the musician’s hearts, breath and hands bear the mark of their personal interpretation.
Chamber music is, therefore, central to me – I have written for the Bennewitz Quartet and Harry-Imre Dijkstra, the Skampa Quartet, Rosanne Philippens, the Bartók Trio, the Utrecht String Quartet and many others.
My chamber music for recorders has a special place in my work and is played in large numbers by amateurs. The CD Kadanza is a fruit of decades of collaboration with the best professionals who were often also the best teachers.
For me, choral music is also a species of chamber music. It should challenge and offer musical satisfaction to those many amateur singers – that I am one of.

My music features individual performers – to convey a thought, an emotion, and a story to the audience in a virtuoso and intense fashion.

In rehearsal and performance, the performers and I learn a lot from each other. Sometimes their improvisations are included in the musical story. Scores will always be adapted to their needs.

The interplay between performer and composer is absolutely essential in newly written music. As is the interplay between sponsor and composer.

Would you like me to rehearse with you or do you want to know more about a piece?

Do you want me to write a piece for a particular line-up or event?

Please let me know and I will contact you.

Besides composing, I lecture in New Music at the Conservatorium van Amsterdam, with a focus on chamber music and music aesthetics. Some of the writing and thinking that I do there can be found in the ‘text’ section.