Challenge Classics are proud to present the result of a new collaboration with the Netherlands Radio Philharmonic Orchestra and its prestigious Saturday Matinee series. This disc contains two major orchestral works by Reinbert de Leeuw, composed respectively in 1974 and in 2013.
Both works are world premiere recordings, and this CD is a significant addition to the contemporary music record repertoire.
De Leeuw may have started out as a composer, but that aspect receded into the background in the 1970s. He became more and more a performer of music of the major composers our own era. In 1974, he seemed to give up composing altogether: the title of his compact, stormy orchestral work Abschied, from that year, says what needs to be said on that front.
After four decades, Der nachtliche Wanderer was the first orchestral work by De Leeuw since Abschied. The stormy, compact nature of his first orchestral work gave way here to an enormous, dramatic structure, suffused with resonant memories. Der nachtliche Wanderer is named after the short poem of the same title by Friedrich Holderlin. It crosses every boundary of pretention: over 50 minutes of music in a single movement, for large orchestra with another orchestra off-stage plus played and spoken fragments on tape. Der nachtliche Wanderer is an extreme work in every respect. Its structure and language are complex, but so is its orchestration: with musicians who play in the wings (in a fernorchester, a la Mahler) and with recordings that sound like shreds of recollection over the orchestra.
