| 1 CD |
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Notify when available |
| Label Globe |
UPC 8711525512504 |
Catalogue number GLO 5125 |
Release date 19 August 2002 |
The Netherlands Chamber Choir was founded in 1937. Over the years composers such as Francis Poulenc, Hendrik Andriessen, Henk Badings and Rudolf Escher wrote works for the ensemble. In 1965 the Dutch government decided to cover the payment of the singers. 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 first of all to the repertory for a cappella chorus. It also collaborates regularly with various ensembles like the Schonberg Ensemble, the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra and the Orchestra of the Eighteenth Century, The repertory of the Netherlands Chamber Choir spans the whole of Western music, ranging from the early Middle Ages to contemporary music.
Uwe Gronostay was born in Hildesheim, Germany in 1939 and studied church music in Hannover, Bremen and Siena. From 1963 onwards, Gronostay worked as cantor and organist in Bremen, where he founded the Nord-deutscbe Figuralchor in 1966. In 1972, he was appointed conductor of the Berlin RIAS-Kammerchor. ln 1982, he became conductor of the Philharmonische Chor Berlin, and has remained its artistic leader till 2002. Many composers, such as Mauricio Kagel, Milko Kelemen, Carl Orff, Krzystof Penderecki, Aribert Reimann and Heinz Werner Zimmermann wrote works of which the first performance was entrusted to Uwe Gronostay. Herbert von Karajan, Seiji Ozawa, Riccardo Muti, Riccardo Chailly and Gerd Albrecht have regularly appealed to him when practising big works with chorus. In 1987 Uwe Gronostay vacated his post as principal conductor of the RIAS-Kammerchor in order to apply himself to his many guest conductorships.
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.
Paul Hindemith studied violin at the Dr Hoch's Konservatorium of Frankfurt and played from 1915 to 1923 in the Frankfurt opera. From 1921 to 1929 he played viola in the Amar Quarter, where he was advocate for contemporary music. Throughout the years, he held multiple positions as teachers, but he remained most popular as a violist. During the Second Worldwar he fleed to the USA and was given the American nationality in 1948, Later, he returned to Europe to teach at the university of Zürich.
His use rhythm, called "Motorik" by himself (a combination of Motor and Musik) is piercing, and at times even tormenting. It echoes the arrival of industralisation and the motor, as Hindemith opposes any form of sentimentality, psychology or personality. This way, Hinemith created shrill, neoclassicistic music (Gebrauchsmusik, music with a social or political aim).
His body of works is quite extensive, with more than 100 compositions in all kinds of genres. Even though he was an advocate of contemporary music, he never felt affiliated with dodecaphony. He wrote several theoretic treatises, among which his Unterweisung im Tonsatz from 1937 in which Hindemith offers several systems in which the tension between intervals, harmony and melody is analysed and elevated into a compositional technique.
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