Ballade

13'

AVROTROS Vrijdagconcert

8 March 2024

TivoliVredenburg Utrecht

Radio Filharmonisch Orkest, conducted by Hannu Lintu

Born in Amsterdam in 1993, Mathilde Wantenaar has already won many awards, most recently the Buma Classical Award 2023. She received this last December at the Konzerthaus Wien, prior to the world premiere of her Accordion Concerto composed for Vincent van Amsterdam and the Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra. The prize from copyright society Buma/Stemra goes to the composer who amassed the most copyrights in a given year. That last year's prize went to Wantenaar is no wonder, as her music pairs striking melodic and harmonic ingenuity with an impressive richness of sound and intense lyricism. It builds on the classical and romantic tradition, yet is entirely of our time. Many of her pieces are also performed more often after the premiere, such as the Octet for strings and Prélude à une nuit Américaine, which already sounded in the AVROTROS Friday Concert in 2019 and were very enthusiastically received. In her 12-minute piece, Wantenaar hooks up with Sibelius' Violin Concerto: 'The texture and playing style of the strings at the end are borrowed from the opening of his Violin Concerto. The last note of my piece is a G, the note with which the solo violin opens. Thus Ballade dissolves, as it were, in the silver fog in which his concerto begins.' In any case, the opening of Sibelius' violin concerto was a source of inspiration, she continues: 'Especially the calm, floating and almost improvisational character of the soloist's melody.' Remarkably, it is not the violin, but the piano that opens the piece. 'I had an image in mind of a jazz pianist, playing and improvising in complete freedom. To capture that flowing, rhythmic and dancing and at the same time free and searching, I gave the music a somewhat spontaneous and improvised character.' As always, the title cost her some headaches: 'I don't want to fill in too much, but I do want a title that fits the piece nicely. That's why I often choose "classic titles" that can be widely interpreted. Ballade has something dance-like, lilting and narrative and, like the "Ballad" from light music, it has a quiet tempo and a melancholic atmosphere. Because of its jazzy undertones, I still thought of "Ballad in Blue", but I feared that this might create confusion with Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue. - Laughing: 'But I'm already starting to have second thoughts...'

DE VOLKSKRANT: Star violinist Alina Ibragimova shines in Sibelius' Violin Concerto in TivoliVredenburg.

 

“Not one, not two, but three highlights last Friday in TivoliVredenburg, Utrecht. The Radio Philharmonic Orchestra, led by the Finnish conductor Hannu Lintu, played a programme consisting of Carl Nielsen’s Fifth Symphony, the Violin Concerto by Sibelius – starring Alina Ibragimova – and a premiere of the Dutch composer Mathilde Wantenaar. Her brand-new Ballade is typically Wantenarian: eclectic, free from pretention, and saturated with French nostalgia. You find yourself in a Parisian salon during the fin de siècle, a recording studio in pre-war New Orleans or a slum in Buenos Aires. Charming trombones meet silky-soft violins, but Ballade remains somewhat fragmented and never really breaks free. During the groovy moments you wish The Buddy Rich Band on stage since the classically-rehearsed jazzy rhythms stagger like a new-born baby goat on its stiff little legs.” Dennis Weijers, De Volkskrant, 10 March 2024