Het Collectief sketches a kaleidoscopic image of a period of roughly a half century, in which composers from our countries were adept at registering the pulse of European culture very adequately and even played a decisive part in it. To take an example, in 1926 the young Albert Huybrechts pilfered the American ‘Sprague Coolidge Prize’right under Bela Bartok’s nose. Regarding the form of Huybrechts’s music, it is austere, original and expressionist, but basically it remains very emotional and melodic. Conversely, Joseph Jongen’s style is much nearer to French impressionism: poetry of sounds, dreamy atmosphere, wonderfully colourful harmony ...
Jongen lived to be eighty years old, a ripe old age certainly, if one compares with other celebrities of Belgian music. Huybrechts did not live to be forty and his great example Guillaume Lekeu died of typhoid fever at the age of twenty-four. The latter’s talent can hardly be overestimated. The youthful, late romantic moods in Lekeu’s music are largely tributary to Wagner and César Franck, without precluding the development of a very personal language. At a very early age, he already knew what he wanted: “Ce sera bizarre, détraqué, horrible, tout ce qu’on voudra; mais du moins ce sera original” (It will be bizarre, flawed, horrible, whatever you want; but at least it will be original). One often wonders: what would this man not have composed, if he had not kicked the bucket so young ...
Het Collectief
Thomas Dieltjens, piano
Toon Fret, flute
Wibert Aerts, violin
Vincent Hepp, alto
Martijn Vink, cello
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28.05.2021 CC Herentals (B)