Richard Rijnvos Born 1964 in Tilburg (the Netherlands), Richard Rijnvos studied composition with Jan van Vlijmen and Brian Ferneyhough at the Royal Conservatoire in The Hague. After finishing these studies summa cum laude he received a DAAD scholarship with which he followed a postgraduate at the Musikhochschule in Freiburg (Germany). In the summer of 1994 he participated in the International Dance Course for Professional Choreographers and Composers in Bretton Hall (Wakefield, UK). In the period 1986-92 he came in touch with the American composers Morton Feldman and John Cage, who caused crucial changes in his development. There are also a number of distinct extramusical influences from artists such as William Burroughs, Samuel Beckett, Joseph Beuys, Italo Calvino, and Ernst Jandl. Since 1993 Richard Rijnvos concentrates on the realization of compositions that are part of larger series. The work Stanza, for instance, exists in a diatonic, chromatic and microtonal version. Between 1995 and 2000 he created the eighty-minute cycle Block Beuys, modeled on the Hessisches Landesmuseum Darmstadt collection by Joseph Beuys. Late 2008 Richard Rijnvos completed Uptown|Downtown, an urban panorama in six ‘movements’. This series - thought of as an evening-long dance production about city life in Manhattan – include the orchestral works Times Square Dance, Washington Square Dance and Union Square Dance, as well as Grand Central Dance, Central Dance in the Park and ’cross Broadway for piano and chamber orchestra. (These last three compositions can be combined in a concert performance, thus forming a piano concerto entitled NYConcerto). In 2007 Richard Rijnvos started a new series called Riflessi, which consists exclusively of companion pieces. Each Riflesso explores the same non-standard scoring of an existing classic by a composer from the past. In May 2010 his song cycle Die Kammersängerin was premiered in a fully staged performance. Renowned companies and institutions have commissioned Richard Rijnvos such as the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, Ensemble Intercontemporain (Paris), the Holland Festival, the ZaterdagMatinee concert series, Elision Ensemble (Australia), Dutch Radio, Nieuw Ensemble (Amsterdam), the Netherlands Wind Ensemble, Ives Ensemble and Asko Ensemble (Amsterdam). His work enjoys attention during international concert series and festivals, amongst others with performances by the BBC Symphony Orchestra, the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra, Brussels Philharmonic, Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin, London Sinfonietta, Apartment House, Ensemble Modern (Frankfurt), Das Neue Ensemble (Hannover), Ensemble KORE (Montréal), Omnibus Ensemble (Tashkent) and many others. Richard Rijnvos has been featured as central composer at the Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival 2004, the "Rijnvos Week" at the Royal Conservatoire (The Hague) in 2008, and during the Festival November Music 2008 (Den Bosch & Ghent). During the concert season 2010-11 he acted as Composer in Residence at the Netherlands Broadcasting Music Center, including collaborations with the Netherlands Radio Chamber Philharmonic and the Netherlands Radio Philharmonic Orchestra during the ZaterdagMatinee concert series in the Amsterdam Concertgebouw. This residency also included a studio recording for CD of the complete Uptown|Downtown cycle, plus the filming of a TV documentary, shot in Venice and Amsterdam. In September 2011 Richard Rijnvos started a three-year residency with the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra. Richard Rijnvos has received various awards, among which the Perspektief Prize 1989 and an honourable mention during the 1991 Prix Italia for his radiophonic production Radio I (on text by Samuel Beckett). In 2000 the City of Amsterdam awarded him the Matthijs Vermeulen Prize, the most prestigious award for composers working in the Netherlands, for Times Square Dance. In August 2008 an international jury voted NYConcerto “the best composition premiered in the Netherlands in the year before”, and it was subsequently awarded the Buma Toonzetters Award. In June 2011 Richard Rijnvos was awarded the Matthijs Vermeulen Prize for the second time, on this occasion for the song cycle Die Kammersängerin. Richard Rijnvos is artistic advisor of the Ives Ensemble (Amsterdam) of which he was managing director from 1991 until 2000. He regularly conducts his own work as well as other’s. Since October 2009 he has been Head of Composition at the Department of Music at Durham University (UK).

The versatile Brazilian conductor Celso Antunes has been the principal conductor of the Netherlands Radio Choir since August 2008. He also teaches choral conducting at the Haute École de Musique de Génève. Celso Antunes (1959) began his musical training in Brazil. He studied voice and conducting at the University of São Paulo and the Musikhochschule Köln. From 1994 to 1998, he was chief conductor of the Neues Rheinisches Kammerorchester.
During the same period he was also chief conductor of the Antwerp ensemble Champ d’Action, with which he performed numerous world premieres. From 2002 to 2007 Antunes was music director and chief conductor of the National Chamber Choir of Ireland. Antunes’s repertoire ranges from choral music of the Renaissance to contemporary music. He has conducted the Nieuw Ensemble, Ensemble Modern and the Tippett Ensemble, which he founded; he also linked his name to premieres of music by Wolfgang Rihm, Jonathan Harvey, Michael Tippett, Hans Zender, Brice Pauset and Lera Auerbach. Antunes has been active on renowned European musical stages and festivals for many years. He was invited to conduct at the Donaueschinger Musiktage, the Festival of Flanders, the Musikbiennale München, the Kurt-Weill-Festival in Dessau, the Living Music Festival in Dublin and November Music in ‘s-Hertogenbosch, to name only a few. Celso Antunes regularly conducts celebrated ensembles such as the SWR Vokalensemble in Stuttgart, the BBC Singers in London, the Berliner Rundfunkchor, the Prague Chamber Choir and the Vlaams Radio Koor in Brussels, and he has worked with Sir Simon Rattle, Zubin Mehta, Mariss Jansons, Charles Dutoit, Peter Eötvös and Sylvain Cambreling. Antunes has served as guest conductor to the Manchester Camerata, the Netherlands Radio Chamber Philharmonic, the Arnhem Philharmonic Orchestra and the Radio Sinfonieorchester NDR Hannover. He regularly returns to his native country and to the Ulster Orchestra of Belfast. Antunes has performed with orchestras such as the Cappella Istropolitana Bratislava, the WDR Radio Symphony Orchestra, the Gürzenich Orchestra Köln, the Deutsche Staatsphilharmonie Rheinland-Pfalz, the Irish Chamber Orchestra and the National Symphony Orchestra of Latvia in Riga. He returns to Brazil every year to conduct Camerata Fukuda and the State Symphony Orchestra of São Paulo. Celso Antunes conducted the Netherlands Radio Choir in a performance of Tristan Murail’s Les sept paroles in the Cité de la Musique, together with the Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France, con-ducted by Pascal Rophé. He has also conducted at the City of London Festival with the BBC Singers, at the Salzburger Festspiele with SWR Vokalensemble and in the public broadcasting NTR series in the Muziekgebouw aan ’t IJ with the Netherlands Radio Chamber Philharmonic.

The Netherlands Radio Philharmonic Orchestra gave its first concert on 7 October 1945, led by its founder and ‘first conductor‘ Albert van Raalte, on Radio “Herrijzend Nederland”. Initially the orchestra spent most of its time in studios working on a large number of recordings for the public broadcasting system. The Netherlands Radio Philharmonic featured prominently in the Saturday Matinee as soon as the series started in 1961, and has continued to give frequent live performances ever since. The celebrated Saturday Matinee has hosted many legendary concerts. Illustrious soloists such as Kathleen Ferrier, Elisabeth Schwarzkopf, Clara Haskil and Jean-Pierre Rampal have shared the stage with the Netherlands Radio Philharmonic Orchestra.
In 2004, the three classical orchestral formations of the broadcasting 15 system were transformed into two: the present Netherlands Radio Philharmonic Orchestra and the Netherlands Radio Chamber Philharmonic. In 2006, these two orchestras, the Netherlands Radio Choir and the Metropole Orchestra joined the Dutch public broadcasting organisation NPO.
The Radio Philharmonic Orchestra has been conducted by great names such as Bernard Haitink, Jean Fournet, Hans Vonk, Sergiu Comissiona and Edo de Waart. Jaap van Zweden was named its chief conductor in September 2005. The orchestra has also worked with numerous famed guest conductors such as Leopold Stokowski, Kirill Kondrashin, Antál Dorati, Riccardo Muti, Kurt Masur and Valery Gergiev. Soon after its founding, the Netherlands Radio Philharmonic found itself foremost in Dutch musical life in the number of performances and the diversity of its repertoire, with a predilection for Dutch and contemporary works in its programming. It has honed another facet of its striking profile with a great many opera concertante performances. The orchestra has an extensive discography, ranging from legendary LPs recorded in the 1970s under such conductors as Leopold Stokowski and Antal Doráti to Jean Fournet’s much-lauded renderings of French repertoire. Under Edo de Waart, not only did it release its legendary Wagner interpretations, but also the complete orchestral works of Rachmaninov. CDs with work by contemporary composers such as Jonathan Harvey, Klas Torstensson, Jan van Vlijmen and Stravinsky have garnered prizes and much acclaim.

The Netherlands Radio Chamber Philharmonic is a versatile orchestra that covers a broad and varied terrain. The orchestra performs in various formations, from Baroque to contemporary music ensemble. Michael Schønwandt is its chief conductor and artistic director. Its principal guest conductors are Philippe Herreweghe, Frans Brüggen and James MacMillan. Former chief conductor Jaap van Zweden was appointed conductor emeritus in May 2011. Radical cutback in expenditure of the Netherlands public broadcasting results in the dissolution of this orchestra in August 2013. The Netherlands Radio Chamber Philharmonic makes an important contribution to the Saturday Matinee, Sunday Morning and Robeco Summer concert series in the Amsterdam Concertgebouw, Utrecht’s Vredenburg Friday series and the NTR concerts in Muziekgebouw aan ’t IJ. All of these concerts are broadcast via Radio 4 and many are recorded for live Internet streaming and TV broadcasts. The Netherlands Radio Chamber Philharmonic is a frequent guest in De Magische Muziekfabriek educational series, the International Gaudeamus Music Week and the Holland Festival.
The Netherlands Radio Chamber Philharmonic is renowned for its impassioned performances of contemporary music. At the internationally respected Donaueschingen Festival for new music, the orchestra performed no less than four world premieres in a single concert conducted by Peter Eötvös in October 2010. One month later its concertante performance of Pascal Dusapin’s Faustus, the last night, the first in the Netherlands, received rave reviews.
The Netherlands Radio Chamber Philharmonic is also known for its performances of familiar and lesser known works of the old masters conducted by specialists in historical performance practice. In recent years the Radio Chamber Philharmonic worked with conductors like Harry Christophers, Andrew Manze, Masaaki Suzuki, Kenneth Montgomery and John Nelson and of course principal guest conductors Frans Brüggen and Philippe Herreweghe. The versatility of the orchestra is demonstrated in its wide range of recordings, from Beethoven, Haydn and Stravinsky to Henk Badings, Tristan Keuris, Otto Ketting, Richard Rijnvos and James MacMillan.

John Snijders is a pianist and founder and artistic director of the Ives Ensemble, focusing primarily on performances of 20th and 21st century music. John Snijders studied piano with Geoffrey Madge at the Royal Conservatory in The Hague. He graduated in 1987. He also studied Hammerklavier with Stanley Hoogland, and composition with Louis Andriessen at the Royal Conservatory. In 1985 he won the Berlage Competition for Dutch Chamber Music 1840-1940, after which his concert performances became more and more numerous. As a soloist he played with the Dutch Ballet Orchestra, the Residentie Orkest, the Radio Philharmonic Orchestra, the Radio Chamber Philharmonic and the Brussels Philharmonic Orchestra. Furthermore he performed solo on several international stages (Hamburg, Madrid, Soria, Avila, Aachen, Delmenhorst, Kassel, Gent, Frankfurt) and at music festivals (e.g. in Zagreb, Darmstadt). In 2008 he was a teacher of piano and chamber music at the Festival Internacional de Inverno de Campos de Jordão (Brazilië). Also in that year he was awarded the Muziekgebouwprijs 2008 for his performance of the NYConcerto by Richard Rijnvos. Several composers wrote works especially for him, among which Christopher Fox, Richard Rijnvos, Gerard Brophy, Ivo van Emmerik, Rodney Sharman, Richard Ayres and Clarence Barlow. Since 1988 he is the permanent pianist of the Nieuw Ensemble.