Reinbert de Leeuw, the great Dutch pianist, conductor, and composer, died on Feb. 14, 2020, at age 81. I've been wracking my brain this evening, trying to recall when I first encountered this brilliant artist, who I sadly never had an opportunity to encounter in live performance. He was closely associated with the music of Erik Satie, of course, and also made numerous important recordings of Louis Andriessen's works. In 1974 he founded the celebrated Schönberg Ensemble, which in time merged with another significant Dutch group, the ASKO Ensemble, becoming ASKO|Schönberg in 2009.
One part of my mind wants to situate discovering de Leeuw somewhere in the vicinity of the other formidable figures of the Dutch avant-garde, including Andriessen, Misha Mengelberg, Han Bennink, and Willem Breuker. Another part insists that I came upon de Leeuw via Messiaen, which is plausible but doesn't seem correct. Still another links him indelibly to Satie, which seems so likely that it surely couldn't be that simple. (I very badly regret missing an opportunity to hear him play Satie with Barbara Hannigan at the Park Avenue Armory a few seasons ago, but at least there's a beautiful documentation of their partnership and project.)
Thinking back on the recordings involving de Leeuw that have meant the most to me, I'm impressed with the sheer variety. His benchmark recording of Lonely Child and other works by Claude Vivier comes to mind immediately; so, too, does the sober eloquence in his account of Harrison Birtwistle's Pulse Shadows. De Leeuw was involved in several volumes of a landmark György Ligeti series on the Teldec label; Volume I (with Pierre-Laurent Aimard in the Piano Concerto) and Volume III (Siegfried Palm in the Cello Concerto, Frank Peter Zimmermann in the Violin Concerto) seem especially essential. And in 2017, De Leeuw was the driving force behind an extraordinary collection of György Kurtág's complete works for ensemble and choir, issued on ECM New Series.
What's clear is that de Leeuw contained multitudes, and touched the lives of countless music lovers. It feels curiously correct, then, to celebrate his memory by turning to one of the more steadfast among his personal passions, the late music of Franz Liszt, via a VPRO video posted to YouTube in 2013.
Comments