On Suturday September 8, Het Zeeuws Orkest, conducted by Ivan Meylemans, premiered my The Wall Symphony in the Industrial Museum in Sas van Gent (NL).
Here are parts of the review that appeared yesterday (PZC, AD)
Read the full review here (Dutch).
EISENGA BUILDS HIS OWN 'WALL' STONE BY BRICK
by Jeanette Vergouwen
SAS VAN GENT - Het Zeeuws Orkest brought humorous Russian music and a phenomenal The Wall Symphony by Douwe Eisenga.
......
The world premiere of The Wall Symphony was introduced with an interview by Frank Deij with Douwe Eisenga. A sentence stayed with me: the statement by Eisenga "I think in terms of
music, only in good and not good." He emphasized that he had took bits from the Pink Floyd Wall and had composed a completely new symphony with it.
The parts: Flesh, Bricks, Sky, Out There and Hey You, may still refer to Pink Floyd, Douwe Eisenga built his own Wall stone by brick.
The beginning is intriguing with a fantastic solo by the trombone. The theme was further expanded by horn, brass players and low strings. The opening part flowed without interruption into
the second part, in which the beautiful structure of the musical material stood out and especially the great instrumentation.
Eisenga knows the timbres of the different instrument groups and forges them into an attractive whole.
The work is exciting, it fascinates from the first tone and that tension remains present. This work, with those idyllic moments (clarinet) asking melody (oboe), the wavy lines through the strings
and great rattling sounds, which evoke fear in the final part, I want to hear more often. I could think of names such as Bruckner and Ravel at certain moments, but this symphony is 100% Eisenga
and... this music is good.
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The new symphony, using full orchestral forces, is inspired by the epic Pink Floyd album The Wall. To be clear : it is new music, vintage Eisenga. It isn't an arrangement of even a so called re-composition of the original music. I took little motives or sometimes a part of chord-progression (with other words I took little stones out of the wall) and used these elements to build a completely new wall of sound.
The piece is about 40 minutes long and has five movements, alternating between meditative parts and pounding rhythmic layers of sound.:
Movement I : FLESH
Flesh uses the melody of the first three bars of In the Flesh.
Movement II : BRICKS
Bricks builds new material upon a variation on chord progressions from Another Brick in the Wall I and In the Flesh.
It also quotes the little main motive from Another Brick in the Wall I.
Movement III : SKY
Sky takes the riff of two bars from Goodbye Blue Sky that forms the ground of a completely new piece.
Movement IV : OUT THERE
Out There builds new material upon a variation on a chord progression from Is there Anybody out there?
Movement V : HEY YOU
Hey You follows more or less the chords and melodic contour from Hey You.
In the second part of the movement elements from the first two movements re-occur.
There's a little virtual snippet of the music in the player besides this text. Check also the video-trailer made by the orchestra.
Next dates :
September 13
Sint Jacobskerk - Vlissingen, NL (during Film by the Sea)
Oktober 13
De Mythe, NL – Goes
Please check the live-section of this site for further concert-details.
I'll hope to see you at one of the concerts !!
cheers,
Douwe
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