De Staalmeesters

‘When Mozart performed, he played Mozart. He improvised. In that respect, this program may be closer to the performance practise of the great classical composers than you might think.’

With this international ensemble, named after the famous painting by Rembrandt van Rijn from 1662, pianist and composer Rembrandt Frerichs brings back to classical music the performance practice of the composer performing original works and improvising on stage.

His layered compositions are written in such a way that classical musicians have freedom to make some of their own creative decisions during the concert. While this may seem like an innovative idea, actually it isn’t. The performance practice of having segments in the written score open for personal input was still very common in Early Music. 

With the preservation and perfecting of classical music, improvisation – originally an important part of the working method for many classical composers – has increasingly faded into the background. In the current concert practice of playing Urtext’s, we are paradoxically drifting further and further away from how the classical composers themselves worked. Mozart, for example, is known for often having no written piano part when he performed the piano concertos himself…at least not until his publisher urged him to write down his music so that others could perform it as well. One could say that from the late 19th century onwards, classical tradition drifted away from this, towards a more strict approach of playing only the written notes, without the original spontaneous elements.

De Staalmeesters collectively breathe new life into the performance practice that was lost from Mozart’s and Beethoven’s time, with the musical freedom that came with it. During concerts this leads to a high state of alertness and a strong openness to communicate on stage. The audience is always very receptive to this way of making music and often says that they have not only heard a concert, but have witnessed a range of musical processes that you see happen spontaneously on stage.

For more information, please visit the website of Rembrandt Frerichs.