Michel van der Aa: Music of Today premieres in London
(September 2008)
Michel van der Aa, the leading young Dutch composer of his generation, travels to London for a portrait concert at the Royal Festival Hall on 9 October.The music of Michel van der Aa is introduced to London audiences at a concert in the Philharmonia Orchestra’s Music of Today series curated by Julian Anderson. The 6.00pm early evening event on 9 October at the Royal Festival Hall includes the London premiere of Here [in circles] for soprano and ensemble and the UK premiere of his recent work Mask for ensemble and soundtrack, with members of the Philharmonia Orchestra conducted by Baldur Brönnimann.
Here [in circles], sung in London by Claron McFadden, is a work that like many of van der Aa’s explores questions of identity and is also a tour de force of virtuosity for the solo performer. The soprano records her own singing live into a cassette recorder, then her rewinding, fast forwarding, and playing back of the tape generates a tense feeling of cyclical imprisonment that is only partly relieved by her final schizophrenic duetting with herself on tape.
Mask was premiered in Cologne last year and has already received ten performances in Belgium, the Netherlands, Italy, Spain, Portugal and Japan. The work examines shifting perspectives and multiple musical discourses. The Mask of the title refers to a second electronic layer created by real-time transformation of the music played by the instrumental ensemble. Both ‘face’ and ‘mask’ co-exist through the piece, but the drama comes when, as the composer describes, “sudden interruptions rip a hole in the texture, revealing previously concealed layers”.
"Michel van der Aa writes music that is similar in its effect to photography… music as an art of time is detached from time itself, and sounds become snapshots of a process. Potential developments are immediately blocked by interruptions, flashbacks, unexpected repetitions. The doubling of music through an electronic shadow creates a kind of multiple exposure… the impression of the music is strong and emotionally draining."
Berliner Zeitung
Michel van der Aa, born in 1970, has established a strong international reputation as a leading composer of his generation, particularly for his works that combine music, electronics and video media such as his opera After Life which enjoyed a sell-out run at the Holland Festival in 2006. Van der Aa’s new music theatre work, The Book of Disquiet, is premiered in Linz on 2 January 2009, starring the celebrated actor Klaus Maria Brandauer. A new orchestral song cycle, Spaces of Blank, is premiered by mezzo soprano Christianne Stotijn and the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra next March, with further performances planned by the NDR Orchestra and Radio France.
Read an interview with Michel van der Aa about The Book of Disquiet.
> Further information on Work: Mask
Photo: Marco Borggreve
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