stedelijk @ concertgebouw - illusions
thu 15 december 20:15

Location: Spiegelzaal, Concertgebouw Amsterdam
Language: Dutch
More information and reservations: www.aaaserie.nl  

The Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam is one of the partners in the interdisciplinary AAA series, in which the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra collaborates with contemporary art and music institutions in Amsterdam. On Friday afternoon, December 16, the Stedelijk and the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra jointly present Confrontations: Music, Art, Debate. The theme of this month's AAA 2011/2012 program is Illusions. For the full program for the week view, please visit www.aaaserie.nl. 

If you select the subject of illusions for a concert, you can’t avoid works which tell a story or evoke an image. This presents all sorts of choices, and the dreamlike images on which this orchestral program is based are quite varied. For example, Italian composer Bruno Maderna presents us with fragments of a historic Venice using excerpts from an eighteenth-century diary. In Dreams, Peter-Jan Wagemans takes us to dreaming dinosaurs from prehistoric times. Hans Werner Henze light-heartedly harks back to the hilariously complicated human relationships in Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, penned in the sixteenth century. Sounds are used to evoke images and atmospheres, dreams and illusions, yet no matter how unreal they might seem, they are always related to the human spirit and experiences from the past. This even applies to the science fiction idea that serves as the basis for Insomnium, by the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra’s house composer Detlev Glanert.

Music is by definition illusory, and, as Martijn Voorvelt wrote, post-war music in particular (you’ll hear music dating from the past 40 years) has produced “a constantly expanding wealth of ideas, sounds and structures.” There is a treasure trove of dreams and illusions for anyone who is open to them. These are real illusions, not those presented in art, which collide with reality sooner or later. The illusions partly develop from what you expect: permanent growth, a stable euro, the security of old age, safe internet communication, steadily increasing house prices, a reliable banking system, a harmonious multicultural society. These are often unconscious illusory certainties of the zeitgeist and it is a disappointment to see them being broken down. The interesting issue is whether it is reality which shakes these foundations, or simply another illusion. Finally, what is the role of art in all this? Is art solely the domain of the imagination, which allows us to escape into dreams for a while, or does it actually give sharper focus to the illusions behind our everyday lives? Why has a strange story like A Midsummer Night’s Dream been able to survive for four centuries? Is good art able to remove us from everyday illusions? Can it stir us to arrive at new points of view, create confusion, and overturn the illusions of modern society’s sacred cows?

On Friday afternoon, the Stedelijk Museum considers these questions during the program Confrontations. Art critic and author Hans den Hartog Jager gives the AAA lecture. Den Hartog Jager is the author of the novel Zelf God worden (Becoming God Yourself), which discusses illusions, and recently he wrote the book Het sublieme (The Sublime), on beauty and contemporary art. Theater director and “Stand-up Philosopher” Laura van Dolron, who has been described as “quick reactions, always honest, constantly looking for the unpalatable truth and sincere lie,” also participates, and has been given the freedom to devise her own contribution. For many years, she has been presenting astonishing productions for, among others, Frascati and Het Nationale Toneel.

Transit by Michel van der Aa, another house composer of the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, will be played both in Confrontations and during the Entrée Late Night Café. Van der Aa’s works often have a visual and theatrical element, in which the conflict between what is and what seems to be plays out. In Transit, a complex piano solo accompanies the conflict between the illusion and reality of an old man. Peter-Jan Wagemans contrasts this with Engelenconcert (Concert of Angels). Confrontations offers plenty of ideas to wrestle with, but don’t forget to enjoy the music. After all, as Oscar Wilde said, “illusion is the first of all pleasures.”