Almost forgotten music legend – NRC

The Jewish orchestra leader Dolf Karelsen was fired by the AVRO immediately after the German occupation. He wrote a piece at that time, The Victory March. “We will perform that after the war with a new orchestra,” he told David van der Linden, then an arranger at the AVRO. The new orchestra arrived in 1945 and played The Victory March. Karelsen never heard him, he was killed by the Nazis. The orchestra was called the Metropole Orkest, Van der Linden became the conductor, and he took Karelsen’s first name Dolf. He and his orchestra became a household name in the Netherlands and far beyond. Carine Lacor and Bas Tukker tell the story of an almost forgotten music legend, interspersed with a lot of music and interviews with the master himself.