Klaas de Vries: “The idea of Cada Instante is that anything can happen at any moment. I wanted to translate that into a large orchestra”
Composer Klaas de Vries turned 80 last summer. And he has written a major new orchestral work for the Residentie Orkest. Reason enough for Festival Dag in de Branding to honour De Vries with an extensive festive edition that lasts the entire weekend. Mid-December, De Vries talked about his life and work in his new apartment near Rotterdam Coolhaven, where he has only been living for two weeks.
How do you feel about turning eighty?
“That number doesn’t mean much to me, to be honest. You just know that you have more past than future. But I am very happy that my music is being played in the festival in March. That is no longer so self-evident, I have fallen out of fashion a bit. Renee Jonker from the Société Gavigniès called me and said that they would like to digitise my entire oeuvre, so that everything is accessible online. Of course I think that is a great ambition. But, I said: it would be nice if that music could also be heard live. Renee thought so too and that is how the ball started rolling. So this festival is a bit my own doing, haha.”
On Sunday, you will also be performing a work from 1962. What kind of piece is that?
“Yes, it’s a piano sonatina that I wrote when I was seventeen. I came across the score when I moved to our new house. It’s a cross-over between Pijper and Poulenc – the fast polytonal first movement is Pijper-like, the slow, melodious movement Poulenc. The funny thing is: I still feel a connection with it, much more than with the pieces I made later at the conservatory when I was trying to break away from these youthful imitations. But this is where I come from. It wasn’t until much later that I found my own style, with the Piano Sonata from 1987 that Bobby Mitchell recently recorded. That was a real breakthrough.”
The festival starts on Friday evening 21 March with the world premiere of your new Cada Instante by the Residentie Orchestra.
“The idea came to me one day and I just started. On my own initiative, without any idea whether it would be performed. That was quite exciting, with such a large orchestral work. The inspiration was a poem by Borges, the Argentinian writer, in which he repeats the phrase ‘at any moment…’ a number of times. In a kind of flash I envisioned the piece before me. That was on the day of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, but I didn’t know that that morning. The piece is not about that either. But Borges’ poem is called ‘Doomsday’, which is a bitter coincidence.”
What does the title Cada Instante mean to you?
“The idea is that anything can happen at any moment. I wanted to translate that to a large orchestra. In the original plan it was to be a work for a large ensemble, but without a conductor; unfortunately that turned out to be not so realistic. The piece will be conducted, but everyone still has to be on high alert all the time. When I had composed fifteen minutes of music I thought: you know what, I’m going to introduce a new instrument, an E flat clarinet, which starts very high, a bit like Varèse, with something new. I wrote a big solo and then an epilogue, but I wasn’t satisfied. Then I showed it to Jan [van de Putte, ed.], who lived on the ground floor of our previous house. I hadn’t said anything beforehand, but Jan remarked about that solo: this doesn’t really make any sense. And he was right about that.”
What was the solution?
“I introduced the material of the solo earlier in the work, shortened the solo and also gave the E flat clarinet a role after the solo. That solo wasn’t an ending, as I thought, but the beginning of something new. Jan was right about that. Now the balance is better and I think it works very well.”
That’s how the student helps the master.
“You could say it like that, yes. Jan often came to me for advice too. However, he never followed the advice, he always did something completely different. And that’s good, I always found students who came up with their own solution the most inspiring.”
Jan van de Putte was your student, and the concert by Asko|Schönberg features a work by the young Jasper de Bock, who is one of Jan’s students.
“Yes, I selected that piece by Jasper, it’s a very good piece. I heard it in a performance at the Royal Conservatoire. Did you know that Jasper is not only taught by Jan, but also by Martijn Padding? Jan says to Jasper: ‘Martijn is your teacher and I am your unteacher.’ You have to be strong to be taught by two such completely opposite composers. Right now, I’m also teaching again, I’m substituting for someone here in Rotterdam. I didn’t miss teaching, but I feel like I will miss it when it stops. It’s so much fun! You can see it right away when someone is driven by a deep fascination for the music. And the great thing is, that fascination is different for everyone.”
View the full program, compiled by Klaas de Vries here. Info and tickets.