The new season of Fokker organ concerts opens with a programme in which dance takes centre stage. Three dancers—Birgit Gunzl, Maria Mavridou and Raoul Freitas Vale Germano—will perform choreographies and dance improvisations to music played by the organist Ere Lievonen on the Fokker organ at the Muziekgebouw. For the occasion, the glass wall of the Kleine Zaal will be fully opened, allowing the dancers to move freely both inside and outside the hall and to occupy the entire third foyer deck in full daylight.
The works on the programme connect in a special way to the theme of ‘dance’. Three of the composers whose works are featured also served in their youth as musical accompanists at a dance academy. The most well-known of these is the Dutch composer Martijn Padding. His Cow Music (originally for harmonium) is an ode to the splendid animal, the cow, and to the Dutch landscape that is gradually disappearing. In the movements ‘Padding’s country dance no.1 & 2’ he also makes reference to dance.
Serpentine (2010), composed by Christina Oorebeek for the Fokker organ, is already a dance in itself, as it is essentially a kind of organ pedal concerto in which the organist virtuosoly navigates the pedals, accompanied by a laptop controlling the manuals of the Fokker organ.
With the title Pas de Deux, composer Martin Lo-A-Njoe unmistakably refers to his musical background as an accompanist for dance, in a pulsed work specially composed for the Fokker organ and the 96-tone Carrillo piano. The piano will once again be played by the pianist Anne Veinberg, who, together with Birgit Gunzl, will also improvise in a fascinating way on and around this striking instrument.
This is complemented by Souvenir by the renowned American composer John Cage, who throughout his life worked extensively with dancers, including the modern dance pioneer Merce Cunningham. With this programme full of movement, the concert can certainly also be called a dance performance.