Jurriaan Andriessen - Concerto for flute and orchestra

Jurriaan Andriessen (1925-1996)

Concerto per flauto e orchestra (1952)

1. Allegro - 00:00
2. Lento - 06:42
3. Allegro scherzando - 13:00

Eleonore Pameijer, flute
Orchestra: Radio Symfonieorkest
Conductor: Alexander Vedernikov


Jurriaan Andriessen was a composer and son of Hendrik Andriessen. He was taught composition at the Utrecht Conservatory by his father and he later studied instrumentation and conducting with Willem van Otterloo and the piano with André Jurres and Gerard Hengeveld. After his final examinations in 1947, he spent several months in Paris with the particular aim of studying film music. There he also took lessons with Messiaen. On returning to the Netherlands, he was commissioned to write the incidental music for the open-air play Het wonderlijke uur ('The Miraculous Hour'), performed in celebration of the 50th anniverary of Queen Wilhelmina's accession; this was his first score for the stage. From 1949 to 1951 he was in the USA on a Rockefeller Foundation Fellowship, and it was there that he wrote the Tanglewood Overture for Koussevitzky and, to a commission from the Dutch government, the Berkshire Symphonies (1949), a work to which Balanchine and Robbins created the ballet Jones Beach, which was given in New York and in many European cities. Andriessen made several visits to Italy and Germany during the period 1951--1953, and at this time he composed two ballet scores: Das Goldfischglas (1952) for the Deutsche Oper am Rhein and De canapé (1953) for the Netherlands Opera.
In 1954 he was appointed resident composer to the Haagse Comedie; one of the first scores resulting from this appointment was that for Mourning becomes Electra, from which Andriessen made a widely performed orchestral suite. Much successful incidental music followed, and further derived concert pieces, including Les bransles érotiques from the score for Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead. In his music for The Tempest (1953) he used electronics for the first time. Andriessen also composed a quantity of music for radio, television and film in addition to his copious output of orchestral and chamber works and pieces for amateurs. He was highly regarded as a composer of occasional music: his commissions include music for the wedding of Princess Beatrix (Entrata Festiva, 1966), the silver jubilee of Queen Juliana (Een Prince van Orangien, 1973) and the coronation of Queen Beatrix (Entrata della regina, 1980). Andriessen has also conducted his own compositions and worked as a television director.
His music exhibits sound professional skill in a style that draws on diverse recently developed techniques without being bound to any specific system. The same attitude is to be found in the work of a number of Dutch composers in the period following World War II, responding to a great hunger for art and relaxation. Influences include American film and theatre music, Copland's ballet scores, Stravinskian neo-classicism, and folk music, both from the regions of the Netherlands and from distant cultures such as Peru. In the second part of the Berkshire Symphonies, Andriessen makes use of the 12-note row from the second part of Berg's Lyric Suite, though the series is used melodically and not elaborated dodecaphonically. Such an eclectic mix was outstandingly well suited to music as dramatic accompaniment, but his concert works sometimes lack a powerful, personal stamp.