Impression 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 It offered a retrospective of New Spirituality with the music of Arvo Pärt, unpublished chamber music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.