Art summit to feature famous Dutch composer
By Izabel Deuff
JAKARTA (JP): Insomnio Group, which has members from the Netherlands, Germany and Spain, will perform five pieces by Theo Loevendie at the Art summit Indonesia II, 1998: Performing Arts, on Saturday and Sunday, at Gedung Kesenian Jakarta.
Born in Amsterdam on Sept. 17, 1930, Loevendie is one of the most famous Dutch composers of the 20th century. He learned clarinet at the Amsterdam (now Sweelinck) Conservatory of music. He then found himself lured by jazz and became a well-known alto and soprano saxophonist who toured with his own quintet, Theo Loevendie Consort.
At the age of 68, Theo Loevendie is still composing and teaching. He was a composition teacher at the Rotterdam Conservatory from 1977 to 1988 and at the Royal Conservatory in The Hague (1988-1995). He now teaches at the Sweelinck Conservatory of Music in Amsterdam where he first met the Insomnio Group in 1996.
"I was flattered and delighted by the chance to participate in the art summit," he said. "They asked me to come with a group to play my music. I asked Insomnio to do it because I already had some experience with them."
Loevendie told The Jakarta Post that the ensemble has already played Venus and Adonis suite, which is, according to him, "the most substantial work of the eight-piece program".
Based on the poem by Shakespeare, this composition was written in 1981 for bass clarinet, mandolin, guitar, violin and percussion. These five instruments are respectively played by Carlos Galvez Taroncer, 22, Martine Sikkenk, 26, Reinhold Westerheide, 40, Sebastiaan Wiegers, 26, and Ulrich Pll, 24.
Insomnio's musicians are all former or current students at the Sweelinck Conservatory of Music in Amsterdam.
Idske Bakker, 28, is also a member of Insomnio. She has played harp since the age of 10 and is to perform a solo in Contradiction III by Robin de Raaf.
Raaf is a 30-year old composer and a previous student of Loevendie's. He has received awards for some of his compositions among which is Anachronie at the International Competition for Composers of Chamber Music in Switzerland in 1997.
The Insomnio ensemble will also play two other pieces by Loevendie's former students: New composition for ensemble by Petros Ovseplan and Bambini sonoro by Vanessa Lann.
Bambini sonoro, Pll said is quite rigorous because musicians have to play their own score at a moment decided by the composer. The interpretation is more limited than in the compositions by Loevendie such as Duo (1987) for bass clarinet.
"When you hear the piece, you think that it is like a piece for double bass jazz players. It is written for one instrument but it sounds like a duo," explained Loevendie.
In describing Dance (1986) another of his pieces he said that it was essentially a violin solo but the violinist has to wear bells on his ankles. Being interested in world music and particularly in music from the Middle East and India, Loevendie likes melting musical influences and plays a part in the multiculturalism movement which is the theme of this art summit.
Loevendie acknowledged that his compositions have been much influenced by Arab and Turkish culture because percussion plays an important part. He loves composers that are rhythmical, which explains why he loves Guillaume de Machaut, a French poet and composer from the 14th century. Loevendie adapted Two pieces on Canons by Guillaume Machaut (1993) for mandolin, guitar, harp and clarinet. This piece displays Loevendie's main style with repetitions of tone and supremacy of rhythm and timbre over harmony.
The Insomnio concert will close with Blues, another piece by Loevendie. Originally created for one piano, the composition has been transformed into a three-instrument piece for the art summit. Playing the piano's score, the Dutch composer will have the opportunity to go on stage and give his personal touch to this concert which is mostly devoted to his works.
Loevendie became renowned in 1968 through one of his compositions called Scaramuccia for orchestra and clarinet. Since then and especially after 1975 when he composed Incantations, he has written more than 50 works ranging from chamber music, symphony orchestra, vocal music and three operas: Naima (1985) on a libretto by Lodewijk de Boer, Gassir, the Hero (1990) and Esme (1995) commissioned by the Holland Festival on a libretto by Jan Blokker.
Loevendie's music is highly appreciated, as he won the Edison Prize in 1982 for his recording of The Nightingale, written in 1979 and based on the tale by Hans Christian Anderson. For his work Flexio which is considered to be his masterpiece and which he wrote in collaboration with Pierre Boulez, he received the 1984 Koussevitz International Record Award. In 1988, he won the Matthijs Vermeulen for his Naima opera.