150 Years of Symphonic Imagination

The HKU Utrecht Conservatory Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Mikhaeil Zemtsov, takes you on a journey through the highlights of the rich musical history of one of the oldest conservatories in the Netherlands. The programme features works by composers who have been associated with the Utrecht Conservatoire over the past century and a half. These include Johannes Brahms, who is known to have performed frequently and enthusiastically at the Building for Arts and Sciences. But also more recent teachers, such as Dutch composer Anne-Maartje Lemereis. The concert bridges academic splendour, modern ritual and intimate sound exploration.

Programme

Composers

Johannes Brahms opens the evening with his Academic Festival Overture, a witty, brilliantly orchestrated homage to student culture. Behind the solemn façade, Brahms conceals a series of playful student songs, which he forges into a festive orchestral work with monumental seriousness and an ironic wink.

The focus then shifts to the present with the Piano Concerto (2023) by Anne-Maartje Lemereis, Composer of the Netherlands, lecturer in Composition and alumnus of HKU Utrechts Conservatorium. She is a composer who approaches the boundaries between tradition and experimentation with remarkable subtlety. Lemereis' music is rich in colour, clear in form and layered in texture, with a solo part that seeks dialogue rather than virtuosity for virtuosity's sake.

This is followed by Stertenwaltzer (1993) by Caroline Ansink, a miniature full of floating lyricism and clarity. Ansink - conductor, composer, orchestra builder and lecturer in Composition at HKU Utrechts Conservatorium - works in this waltz with a typically Dutch transparency in sound and harmony, as if the music itself sketches a spinning night sky.

The work of Tristan Keuris, former teacher at HKU Utrechts Conservatorium, concludes the programme. His L'infinito (first movement), inspired by Giacomo Leopardi's poem of the same name, exudes an almost cosmic tranquillity: broad lines, rounded harmonies and a transparent build-up of tension. Finally, Keuris' Saxophone Quartet follows, here in a solo version by Andreas Mader, lecturer in Classical Saxophone at HKU Utrechts Conservatorium. Keuris' affinity with warm melody and rhythmic clarity is clearly audible here. It is music that sounds lyrical, dreamy and powerfully earthy at the same time.