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| Label Challenge Classics |
UPC 0608917295726 |
Catalogue number CC 72957 |
Release date 02 June 2023 |
"Suffice it to say that I am convinced by these performances that these two works deserve to be heard and reheard, and that is good enough for me."
Fanfare Magazine, 01-3-2024De Leeuw may have started out as a composer, but that aspect receded into the background in the 1970s. He became more and more a performer of music of the major composers our own era. In 1974, he seemed to give up composing altogether: the title of his compact, stormy orchestral work Abschied, from that year, says what needs to be said on that front.
After four decades, Der nächtliche Wanderer was the first orchestral work by De Leeuw since Abschied. The stormy, compact nature of his first orchestral work gave way here to an enormous, dramatic structure, suffused with resonant memories. Der nächtliche Wanderer is named after the short poem of the same title by Friedrich Hölderlin. It crosses every boundary of pretention: over 50 minutes of music in a single movement, for large orchestra with another orchestra off-stage plus played and spoken fragments on tape. Der nächtliche Wanderer is an extreme work in every respect. Its structure and language are complex, but so is its orchestration: with musicians who play in the wings (in a fernorchester, à la Mahler) and with recordings that sound like shreds of recollection over the orchestra.
Reinbert de Leeuw is a well-known conductor and pianist performing mainly contemporary music. He also taught at the Royal Conservatoire of The Hague and founded the “Dutch Charles Ives Society”.
In 1974 he founded the Schönberg Ensemble. They focus on performing works by the Second Viennese School. For the strings of the ensemble he composed the piece Etude.
Reinbert de Leeuw regularly conducts the Netherlands' major orchestras and ensembles, including the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, Residentie Orchestra The Hague, the Netherlands Chamber Choir and the ASKO ensemble. He is a regular guest in most European countries and the United States, Japan and Australia. Reinbert de Leeuw has been involved in various opera productions at the Dutch National Opera in Amsterdam as well as with the Nederlandse Reisopera. Productions include works by Strawinsky, Andriessen, Ligeti and Vivier. In 2011, he conducted Schoenberg's monumental Gurre-Lieder, which was the realisation of an old ambition of his.
De Leeuw was in 1992 guest artistic director of the Aldeburgh Festival and from 1994–1998 artistic director of Tanglewood Festival of Contemporary Music. He was artistic advisor for contemporary music with the Sydney Symphony Orchestra and from 2001 to 2010 he served as artistic leader at the Nederlandse Orkest- en Ensemble-Academie (NJO; Dutch Orchestra and Ensemble Academy).
Reinbert de Leeuw is a well-known conductor and pianist performing mainly contemporary music. He also taught at the Royal Conservatoire of The Hague and founded the “Dutch Charles Ives Society”.
In 1974 he founded the Schönberg Ensemble. They focus on performing works by the Second Viennese School. For the strings of the ensemble he composed the piece Etude.
Reinbert de Leeuw regularly conducts the Netherlands' major orchestras and ensembles, including the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, Residentie Orchestra The Hague, the Netherlands Chamber Choir and the ASKO ensemble. He is a regular guest in most European countries and the United States, Japan and Australia. Reinbert de Leeuw has been involved in various opera productions at the Dutch National Opera in Amsterdam as well as with the Nederlandse Reisopera. Productions include works by Strawinsky, Andriessen, Ligeti and Vivier. In 2011, he conducted Schoenberg's monumental Gurre-Lieder, which was the realisation of an old ambition of his.
De Leeuw was in 1992 guest artistic director of the Aldeburgh Festival and from 1994–1998 artistic director of Tanglewood Festival of Contemporary Music. He was artistic advisor for contemporary music with the Sydney Symphony Orchestra and from 2001 to 2010 he served as artistic leader at the Nederlandse Orkest- en Ensemble-Academie (NJO; Dutch Orchestra and Ensemble Academy).
Suffice it to say that I am convinced by these performances that these two works deserve to be heard and reheard, and that is good enough for me.
Fanfare Magazine, 01-3-2024
He could not find himself a better expert than himself to carry out the balance required by such writing with the Netherlands Radio Philharmonic.
Diapason, 01-2-2024
The music of composer/conductor/pianist Reinbert de Leeuw (1938 - 2020) is as astounding as anything i've heard. His final two orchestral works, both recorded live, may have been composed 40 years apart, but both are complex, layered, and filled with dark, aggressive and soul-shakingly violent energy.
Thanks to extraordinary digital restoration by Bert van der Wolf and Oude Avenhuis of Northstar Recording Services, the 2017 live recording, conducted by Edo de Waart, is guaranteed to blow you away, assuming your system can handle it.
Stereophile, 01-2-2024
For listeners who are drawn to the modern tendencies of the 1970s and beyond, this CD can hardly fail to please, and I give it a firm recommendation in every parameter.
Fanfare Magazine, 01-1-2024
Reinbert de Leeuw is also a regular in the album list, but this is probably the last time. De Leeuw passed away in 2020, and this is an album that, in our opinion, should have been released much earlier. He had not written another piece for years, until he came up with the orchestral work Der nächtliche Wanderer in 2013, which he conducted himself with the Radio Philharmonic Orchestra. Important Dutch music history.
De Volkskrant, 20-12-2023
Yet his own compositions are also worthwhile and it is therefore right that Challenge Records recently released recordings of 'Der nächtliche Wanderer' and 'Abschied', recorded during the NTR ZaterdagMatinee.
Nieuwe Noten, 27-9-2023
Both pieces by De Leeuw also refute the belief of the Notenkrakers that the orchestra is a thing of the past for the really interesting composers, partly due to the excellent 2017 performance of the work by Edo de Waart.
Luister, 01-9-2023
+ fitting tribute to composer Reinbert de Leeuw
+ good performances
+ outstanding recordings
Nederlands Dagblad, 07-7-2023
Der nächtliche Wanderer, spoken text by Hölderlin, also seems to be a farewell to life. Even if the composer still had seven years to go, it is death music. Bells strike a ritual H-Hour, on tape a lone dog barks, the viola weeps Schubertian weary minor thirds; Winterreise 3.0. Softly but surely, the litany of a crystal clear mind unfolds in a battered body, Reinbert in short. All movement is spiritual. The thoughts form small, puffing sound clouds. But then it gets loud and here and there Stravinskian again, as in Abschied already.
De Groene Amsterdammer, 28-6-2023
The performances by the Radio Philharmonic Orchestra, conducted by De Leeuw himself (Der nächtliche Wanderer) and by Edo de Waart (Abschied), are excellent. It is right that the small orchestral oeuvre of the great admirer De Leeuw is honored in this way.
NRC, 23-6-2023
The intensity of the swelling orchestra is almost unbearable. No orchestra could have played this better.
De Volkskrant, 15-6-2023
A very special album this one, released by Challenge Classics. With the RPO in top form. Testimonies of the late romantic who De Leeuw was in heart and soul.
Trouw, 06-6-2023
A music that really aims to be a kind of highly impressive swan song and resonates in the memory as a kind of eternal farewell. The members of the Radio Philharmonic Orchestra play nail the performance and continuously serve De Leeuw at all his beck and call.
Opus Klassiek, 01-6-2023
Both pieces are performed at a high level and the recording is excellent.
Pizzicato, 31-5-2023
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