The Netherlands Chamber Choir was founded in 1937 by the now legendary conductor and pianist Felix de Nobel. Composers such as Francis Poulenc, Hendrik Andriessen, Henk Badings and Rudolf Escher wrote works for the Netherlands Chamber Choir. In 1965 the Dutch government decided to cover the payment of the singers completely. This enabled the Netherlands Chamber Choir to occupy a unique place among the professional choirs in Europe without any firm bond to an opera house or a broadcasting corporation.
The Netherlands Chamber Choir applies itself fitrst of all to the repertory for a cappella chorus. The repertory of the Netherlands Chamber Choir spans almost the whole of Western music, ranging from the early Middle Ages to contemporary music. Uwe Gronostay bas been the artistic director and principal conductor from 1988 to 1998.
Edgar Krapp was born in Bamberg in 1947; he studied organ with Franz Lehrndorfer in Munich and with Marie-Claire Alain in Paris. On winning first prize in the Munich ARD-Wettbewerb, he quickly profiled himself, while playing in Europe, America and Japan, as a musician who combines virtuosity with a decided feeling for style and musical individuality. His repertoire spans music from the early Baroque to the present day. He has co-operated in many recordings for CDs, radio and television; for three of them he received the Deutsche Schallplattenpreis and the Grand Prix du Disque. Edgar Krapp has been leader of the organ class at the Frankfurter Musikhochschule since 1974, as successor to Helmut Walcha.
The Netherlands Chamber Choir exists since 1937, and has been one of the world’s top choirs for decades. The Netherlands Chamber Choir has been internationally praised by critics for its homogeneous sound and for the soloist quality of the singers. One of the choir’s missions is to keep choral music very much alive as an art form, by looking for new formats, by innovative commissions and exciting collaborations. It results in concerts that are not only perceived as beautiful, but that appeal to all senses.
Education and participation are a vital part of the choir’s mission. The Netherlands Chamber Choir provides coaching, workshops, and ‘adopts’ choirs as supporting act for their own concerts.
Besides their own concert series, the choir often collaborates with renowned ensembles such as the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, ASKO|Schönberg, La Fenice and Concert Lorrain.
From August 1, 2015 Peter Dijkstra watches over the unique sound of the Netherlands Chamber Choir The Netherlands Chamber Choir had Felix de Nobel as its first chief conductor. Uwe Gronostay, Tõnu Kaljuste, Stephen Layton and Risto Joost were his respective successors. Each of them gave the Netherlands Chamber Choir, and choral music in general, new, major impulses.
Zoltán Kodály was a Hungarian composer, born in 1905. If you would read Kodály's biography, you could only do so with increasing astonishment. Not only did he reach the honarable age of 84, throughout his whole life he remained astoundingly prolific - and with great success. Moreover, besides his work as a composer, Kodály was active as a conductor, (ethno-)musicologist, pedagogue, linguist, and philosopher. And in each of these areas, he had a pioneering role, always with exceptional passion and dedication. To name but one example: together with his friend Belá Bartók he worked on a ten volume reference guide to Hungarian music, which appeared from 1951 with each volume spanning more than a thousand pages.
Yet, Kodály gained acclaim for his compositions as well, with his Psalmus hungaricus (1923) en his opera Háry János (1926) as the pinnacles of his musical career. The core of his body of work consists of vocal music, in particular works for choir, but his instrumental music is just as impressive. His master piece Laudes Organi, written one year before his death, truly proves that Kodály's creative energy stayed with him to the bitter end.
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