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Incantatie IV A melodious and orchestrally repetitive piece for several keyboard instruments, Incantatie IV is a one of the pieces that Ten Holt wrote for mutliple keyboards between 1976 and 1998. It is one of Ten Holt’s most complex works: while Canto Ostinato only has five staves, Incantatie IV has fifteen layers. Certain aspects of the composition are left up to the performers, like timbre and pitch, style of play and tempo, number of voices or instruments, and number of times certain parts are repeated. The final form is decided upon on stage by the performers and the length of the composition is undetermined. This piece, therefore, exists in a grey area between composed and improvised music: Ten Holt comments, ‘although there is a score with prescribed notes, the performer can still decide when these notes will turn into sound. Where notes appear there might be a silence, on the other hand the score might show no notes, and yet there can be sound’. The composition is divided into seven sections which flow into one another without interruption. Jeroen van Veen, one of the performers on this disc, says, ‘listening to this music is like looking at the sea for a long time; the waves, the rays of sunshine and the air all influence the glittering and different colours of the sea. Characteristic of this spectrum of changing possibilities is continuous motion, like a perpetuum mobile’. This composition can therefore be regarded as work in progress.
First page of Simeon ten Holt’s Incantatie IV
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Simeon ten Holt
Jeroen van Veen
The composer Simeon ten Holt was born in 1923 and died in 2012 in Bergen, The Netherlands. He studied compostition with Jacob van Domselaer (1890–1960) and later at the École Normale Supérieure with Honegger and Milhaud in Paris. Co-founder of the Werkgroep Hedenhaagse Muziek (Working Group Modern Music) in Bergen, Ten Holt’s social involvement, philosophical attitude and literary qualities became obvious in a series of articles on music which he published in the magazine Raster between 1968 and 1973. Ten Holt has an extensive oeuvre which can be divided into various periods. During the first period he developed his musical identity by liberating himself from the influence of his tutor Van Domselaer; the two piano works Bagatellen and Cyclus aan de Waanzin (Cycle to Madness) are typical of this process. The second period includes music which is constructed on the basis of theoretical principles, where notes are determined by means of serialistic technique. Towards the end of his career, Ten Holt returned to the instrument for which he started composing: the piano. This resulted in a series of compositions for several pianos lasting an entire evening: Canto Ostinato (1976–9), Lemniscaat (1982–3), Horizon (1983–5), Incantatie IV (1987–90) and Méandres (1995–7). www.simeontenholt.com
‘Dutch pianist and composer Jeroen van Veen, the leading exponent of minimalism in Holland today.’ Alan Swanson (Fanfare) Jeroen van Veen, born in 1969, started playing the piano at the age of seven, later studying at the Utrecht Conservatory with Alwin Bä r and Hå kon Austbø, and passing the Performing Artists’ Exam in 1993. Van Veen has played with orchestras conducted by Howard Williams (Adams), Peter Eö tvö s (Zimmermann) in Amsterdam, Utrecht, Vienna and Budapest, and in the United States with Neal Stulberg (Mozart & Bartó k) and Robert Craft (Stravinsky). He has given recitals in Austria, Belgium, Canada, Colombia, England, France, Germany, Hungary, Italy, Russia and the USA. Van Veen has attended masterclasses with Claude Helffer, Hans-Peter and Volker Stenzl, and Roberto Szidon. He has been invited to several festivals – Reder Piano Festival (1988), Festival der Kunsten in Bad Gleichenberg (1992), Wien Modern (1993), Holland Dance Festival (1998), Lek Art Festival (1996–2007) – and has recorded for major television and radio companies in Holland, Florida and Moscow. 5
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In 1992 Van Veen recorded his first CD with his brother Maarten as the internationally recognised piano duo ‘Van Veen’. In 1995 the duo made their debut in the United States and were prizewinners in the prestigious Fourth International Murray Dranoff Two Piano Competition in Miami, Florida. After this achievement they toured the United States and Canada many times. The duo were the subject of the documentary Two Pianos One Passion, which was nominated for an Emmy Award in 1996. The various compositions by Van Veen, who has written more than 80 works, may be described as ‘Minimalist’ with different faces: crossovers to jazz, blues, soundscape, avant-garde, techno, trance and pop music. Van Veen is director of Van Veen Productions and is chairman of the Simeon ten Holt Foundation and the Pianomania Foundation, as well as artistic director of several music festivals in Culemborg, Utrecht and Veldhoven. He is also active in the Murray Dranoff Two Piano Competition, based in Miami. Over the last 20 years Van Veen has recorded more than 100 CDs and 5 DVDs for several labels (Mirasound, Koch, Naxos, Brilliant Classics), including his own, PIANO; the recording of Les Noces for Naxos was described by the New York Times as ‘the best recording ever’ and Classics Today gave Van Veen’s release of Erik Satie’s Complete Music For Piano Four Hands 10 out of 10 for artistic and sound quality, calling it ‘a must for Satie fans’. In 2010 he trademarked his successful ‘ligconcert’ piano series. www.jeroenvanveen.com
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Sandra van Veen Sandra van Veen studied with the Norwegian pianist Hå kon Austbø at the Conservatory in Utrecht, graduating in 1992. She made her professional debut with her husband Jeroen in a performance of Canto Ostinato during the Lek Art Festival (Culemborg). The concert was recorded live, with the CD selling in more than 40 countries worldwide. Many more CDs and concert engagements followed after this success. Sandra has built much of her career on performing the music of Ten Holt, but she also plays other kinds of repertoire, ranging from classical works like Carmina Burana, The Planets and Rhapsody in Blue to tangos and Tubular Bells (Mike Oldfield) for four pianos. She has premiered several pieces by Dutch composers such as J. Andriessen (in Russia) and Ten Holt (in Canada), and has performed as far afield as Miami and Novosibirsk (Russia). She takes part in many projects in Holland as well as abroad, and has also recorded many CDs for various labels, with several of her concerts and projects having been broadcast on radio, television and the internet. A highly respected teacher, she is a co-founder of the Lek Art Foundation and the Simeon ten Holt Foundation. She runs her own company ‘De Walnoot’, which is based in Culemborg, The Netherlands. www.pianoduo.org 7
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Tamara Rumiantsev Tamara Rumiantsev was born in The Hague, The Netherlands, to a Russian father and an Indonesian mother. She studied for a degree in Piano Performance at the Utrecht School of the Arts with Norwegian pianist Håkon Austbø. After graduating summa cum laude, she went on to masterclasses at Mozarteum Salzburg with Tatiana Nikolaeva, a pupil of the great Russian pedagogue Alexander Goldenweiser, and with French pianist Germaine Mounier. Prior to this, she took part in masterclasses with Peter Feuchtwanger, whose principles on piano technique fascinated her. Scholarships from the British Council, VSBfonds and Prins Bernhard Cultuurfonds enabled her to study in London at the Royal College of Music with Yonty Solomon, and in New York with Nina Svetlanova (herself a pupil of Heinrich Neuhaus) and the Russian-American pianist Bella Davidovich. In the US she was a finalist in the St Charles World Piano Competition (1995) after which she made her debut with the Schumann Concerto. Back in The Netherlands she graduated in both Musicology and Music Theory at the University of Utrecht and Utrecht School of the Arts. After she made her debut in the Concertgebouw (Kleine Zaal) with chamber music and solo repertoire, she performed both of Ravel’s concertos in 2004 with the Noord Nederlands Orkest, conducted by Jacques Mercier. 8
Tamara is involved in chamber music, accompanying and interdisciplinary projects. Aside from traditional recitals, she has been developing other platforms such as lecture-recitals, programmes of minimalist music, transcriptions and performances in public spaces. She has made various recordings for radio and television, and as a soloist has recorded a wide range of repertoire on the Brilliant Classics and Emergo labels. These have included works by Dutch composers Simeon ten Holt and Chiel Meijering, Spanish composer Antonio Soler, and by Haydn, Schubert, Chopin, Rachmaninoff, Scriabin, Debussy and Ravel. In 2011 she initiated the foundation Concerts2Connect to link artistic and socially engaged projects, like charity concerts and fund-raising activities, with third parties. At the Utrecht Conservatory in The Netherlands she teaches music-theoretical subjects, coaches ensembles and supervises the research of Masters students. In 2013 she enrolled at Leyden University for a PhD on collaborative work forms in higher music education. www.tamararumiantsev.com
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More Simeon ten Holt on Brilliant Classics
Recording: 19 October 1998 (live performance), K&W, Utrecht, The Netherlands Produced by Van Veen Productions for Brilliant Classics, www.vanveenproductions.com Recording: Rutger Boere & Jeroen van Veen Executive producer: Jeroen van Veen Engineering & mastering: Pianomania Software: Pro Tools & Samplitude Pianos: Yamaha CFIII Piano tuner: Andé Oorebeek Publisher: Donemus, The Hague Schedule score (see inlay): Jeroen van Veen Artist photos: 훿 Janey van Ierland (Jeroen van Veen & Sandra van Veen); 훿 Norbert Geheniau (Tamara Rumiantsev) & 훿 2014 Brilliant Classics
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Complete Multiple Piano Works 7795 11CD
Canto Ostinato for four pianos 9261 2CD
Solo Piano Music, Volumes I–V 9434 5CD
Canto Ostinato XL 9453 12CD
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