Holland Festival 2005

The patterns used to sew the Holland Festival’s summer suit for 2005 once again fitted the Dutch audience as if custom-made. Pierre Audi, the new tailor in this established house of high fashion, placed his own stamp on a trusted and familiar product. His was not just the choice of a few trendy designs, but the result of a vision which will continue to put the Festival on the map as a world-class artistic producer, with a deep commitment to contemporary and non-classical music, as well as innovation in music-theatre. The spectrum of performances and projects in the Holland Festival 2005 programme were framed by the motto Heaven and Hell, Angels and Demons. It offered a retrospective of New Spirituality with the music of Arvo Pärt, unpublished chamber music by Claude Vivier and the Dutch premiere of Kaija Saariaho’s opera l’Amour de loin; demonic sounds and images in Louis Andriessen’s Racconto dall’Inferno and Rubber Johnny, a new film by the cult director Chris Cunningham. And, after London and New York, Amsterdam also got its chance to experience John Tavener’s night-long The Veil of The Temple, topped off with a hearty breakfast. There were also connections and cross-pollinations related to the theme. Peter Sellars’ Bach interpretations met imploring, politically charged Samoan rituals. The electronic music of the Icelandic group múm and the Warp DJ’s from London were set against the classic avant-garde of Iannis Xenakis, Helmut Lachenmann, Steve Reich and John Cage. And there were provocative juxtapositions, between Andriessen’s De Tijd and Japanese Gagaku music, and between Peter Brook’s north-African narrative Tierno Bokar and the music of authentic Sufi brotherhoods from Iran, Afghanistan and Tajikistan.   The neo-folk music of Devendra Banhart also claimed a place in the programme as did the songs of Nick Drake. There was opera of course, with the exceptional double bill Wozzeck/Lulu by the Hamburgische Staatsoper and the opera debut of director Guy Cassiers. And there was dance and theatre, with Joachim Schlömer, Pippo Delbono, and the internationally acclaimed theatrical triumphs Anatomie Titus and Elementarteilchen by Johan Simons. The ancillary programme included the EarFuel concert series (featuring Laurie Anderson’s new solo performance), a literary programme, philosophical discourse, an expanded educational programme and an overall lighting concept encompassing the entire Festival by designer Peter Van Praet. The 2005 edition also saw the grand opening of Amsterdam’s spectacular, new cultural venue, the Muziekgebouw aan ‘t IJ. Joining the other Festival venues the Stadsschouwburg (City Theatre), the Muziektheater (Opera House) and the Westergas sites, it instantly became a familiar home for the Festival's leading-edge music, theatre an dance performances. As an international festival, the 2005 Holland Festival offered audiences a wide variety of extraordinary and stimulating artistic projects from all over the world. The Japanese imperial court, the Théâtre des Bouffes du Nord (Paris), the Hamburg opera, the Royal Festival Hall (London) and the Finnish National Opera found their way to Amsterdam, as well as productions from Zurich, Samoa, Munich, Boston, Tallinn, Lucerne, Modena, Lisbon, Mazare-el-Charif, Berlin and New York. Making the Dutch capital once again the envy of the cultural world in June.