Premières 2020-2021

Holtslag&Ruysdael Kwartet
Peter Holtslag & The Ruysdael Quartet

Songs of War & Peace, for recorder and string quartet, was baptised by master recorder player Peter Holtslag and the Ruysdael Quartet in a series of four concerts in October 2020. The piece was originally written for the Bennewitz Quartet but the Covid-crisis prevented this great Czech quartet from coming to the Netherlands. You can hear the Ruysdael’s wonderful playing in the recording made by Dutch Classical Radio. Peter Holtslag, who commissioned the piece, will take it to Germany in 2021-2022 to give it a première there in the ElbPhil in Hamburg.  I am very proud of the piece and look forward to its reception in Germany.

 

 

Scènes uit ons lot  (‘Scenes from Our Fate’) was premiered on June 5, 2021 in the Aegtenkapel, Amersfoort. It is a song, or ballad, on a text by former Dutch Poet Laureate Ester Naomi Perquin in which she describes our experiences of the Covid-crisis in vivid, and sometimes comical, detail. Written for Camerata Trajectina and its lead singer Nico van der Meel, it uses a renaissance mixed consort and mean-tone temperament to describe a very contemporary phenomenon.