Les Hollandais volants

In cooperation with Gert Oost

Here are the Dutch! Of course, an image dealing with water is best to bring this message. Several ages ago seamen traversed the open sea to East India. And they encountered many fears. Suppose the skipper and his crew would meet the Flying Dutchman in African waters... The phantom ship that inspires everybody with awe, and that according to tradition wanders near the Cape of Good Hope. It can sail right against the wind and right through other ships.

Inspired by the pioneering spirit of this theme, the Dutch Recorder Orchestra Praetorius under the baton of Norbert Kunst and organ-player and musicologist Gert Oost present the programme Les Hollandais volants -French for "The Flying Dutchmen". The focus of this programme will be on pieces of sixteenth and seventeenth century composers living in the towns of Leiden and The Hague. To make the programme complete, Gert Oost composed the Suonata della settima grande for church organ and recorder orchestra especially for this series of concerts.

The combination of organ and recorder orchestra is a special one. Looking at the Praetorius orchestra, many have described it as the interior of an organ case: recorders of different sizes, or a series of wooden pipes with holes for fingering. In an organ wind is blown into the pipes from the bellows, in the orchestra the pipes are blown by the breath of the players. Suonata della settima grande shows both serious and humoristic aspects of this unique combination, for example in the Scherzo, when cheerful birds are drowned out by noisy brakes and wailing sirens by making use of the major seventh chord. The subtitle of this piece is appropriately called: I break for queer birds too!

The thrilling major seventh chord is used by Gert Oost as a leitmotiv, a small melodic fragment. Richard Wagner used the principal of the leitmotiv in his operas to announce certain states of mind, events or persons. Please note that he experimented with the leitmotiv for the first time in his opera Der fliegende Holländer!

The period in which people were most frightened by The Flying Dutchman, is the Dutch Golden Age. During this period of prosperity and important social, cultural and scientific developments, the composers Cornelis Schuyt, Christian Ruppe, Johann Christian Schickhardt and Jan Pieterszoon Sweelinck, among others, are working in The Netherlands. Some of their pieces will be played in the programme of Les Hollandais Volants. And perhaps the audience will find itself face to face with The Flying Dutchman during Les Hollandais Volants. Wagner might be passing by... But you can never know in advance!

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