You leave day in the surf with Beethoven in your head, but Klaas de Vries in your mind

You have those concerts where the music in the concert hall lags behind as soon as you leave the building, and there are concerts that take you home, where you will continue to chew on the way. In the last category, De Slim programmed opening of the Haagse Festival Day in De Branding fell last Friday evening.

Not that the music was so easy to hum with or to whistle on the street – on the contrary. The evening was dominated by two monumental orchestra works by composers Klaas de Vries (80) and György Kurtág (99). Cut music from similar wood: atmospheric, expressively charged, often abruptly voting. A packed image that sounds like the Northern Lights in musical form. With a clear form, but just define it.

In Kurtágs Stelle Take crawling nuts into a chaotic swarm of strings. Pulsating chords give a sense of alienation. Conductor Chloe Rooke traveled specifically to Budapest to point her approach to the piece together with the Hungarian composer. With a broad, clear stroke, she led the Residentie Orkest on Friday, for the occasion with conservatory students extended to 115 musicians, convincingly by the intoxicating score.

It is precisely because of that required mega -using the work can rarely be heard, but tonight it happened to be big, because of a world premiere of Klaas de Vries, guest curator of this festival edition. For his composition Cada Instant – Every moment – he took a poem by Jorge Luis Borges as a starting point. On paper, an explanation of the idea that every moment can be everything: the crater of hell, but also the waters of paradise. More than a hundred musicians on stage.

A mysterious Cimbalom

In the 45 -minute Cada Instant A kind of musical tableaus are rigged, in which instrument groups work together one time, and then shoot kacophonic again. In the silent hearing of each tableau, new possibilities are emerging for the following. It sounded like a series of parallel universes on Friday evening, in which you always heard a completely different interpretation of one and the same time.

In the imaginative orchestration, it was sometimes a bit of a search to bring at home what you heard. Ah, a softly rolling xylophone about tremolos in the viola. Or the mysterious zip of a Cimbalom-referring to the Eastern European sound language of Kurtág. De Vries has a preference for the lowest timbres of the orchestra, such as bastrombone and double bass clarinet.

That is why it is a pity that the acoustics of Concertzaal Amare continue to sound so slim and strict. Even the eleven (!) Contrabasses in the Kurtág piece could only limit the orchestra sound with heat. A few disturbing details in particular were enlarged: the truly keys, or the high heels of someone who stifled from the balcony to the exit during a whispering passage.

Beethoven in between

For the piano, the room is a lot more gracious, the flexible and sensitive game of Hannes Minnaar in Beethoven’s Fourth piano concert. Smart move to place that piece between the two contemporary orchestrous giants. The repeated chords of Beethoven’s opening suddenly felt like thoughtful echo of the pulsations in Stelle. And with the impressive solo cads, specially composed by De Vries, it was already looked ahead to Cada Instant. Roke gave the strings of the strings of the Residentie Orkest a nice awake and shiny sound.

On the way home, Beethoven’s catchy Melodies from before the break still sings in your head, but with the double bottom of the poem of Borges after it. Every moment can be anything. Beethoven’s music as several possibilities next to each other: the piano rolls out a motif, the orchestra is always just a little different. A concert that stimulates thought.

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