Roeland Hendrikx Ensemble

ZAYT GEZUNTERHEYT

The folk soul of the Eastern clarinet

Nicolas Dupont, violin

Noémi Tiercet, violin

Sander Geerts, viola

Sébastien Walnier, cello

Liebrecht Vanbeckevoort, piano

Roeland Hendrikx, clarinet

IIn their new album, clarinetist Roeland Hendrikx and his ensemble explore the soul of Eastern European folk music in classical compositions. The Slavic earth is so intensely connected to the fate of the Jewish people that the smallest fiber of melancholy in Russian music evokes that fate, every farewell depicts the diaspora, and every dance sounds like Klezmer. 

Prokofiev was not Jewish, but in 1919 he did write a sextet on Hebrew themes for the Russian Zionist Organization. The first theme, Un poco allegro, is reminiscent of Klezmer in its alternation of low and high registers and extremely lively dynamics. The second, Più mosso, is nostalgic and cantabile. The title of this program, Zayt Gezunterheyt refers to a Yiddish folk song that Prokofiev incorporated into this Piu Mosso. 

Glazunov's Rêverie Orientale for clarinet and string quartet (from 1886) recalls the exoticism of distant places (Bokhara and Samarkand ) as they take shape in the Russian imagination. The mood is dreamy with an unearthly and sometimes eery sense of vastness and infinity. Khatchaturian brings us back to earth with a blooded trio in which the twin voices of violin and clarinet bring to life the polyphony of Western art music and Eastern European folk music in tingling ways. 

Quartettino (1952) for clarinet, violin, viola and cello by Hungarian composer Rezső Kókai (1906-1962) is a jewel of neoclassical intimacy: it exudes Slavic rhapsodic melancholy in every phrase. 

Jan Van der Roost is known worldwide today for his music for concert band and brass band. The Roeland Hendrikx Ensemble was eager to further strengthen the bridges that "Fräulein Klarinette" has been building between concert band and classical orchestra since its inception, and asked Jan Van der Roost to write new chamber music for the full Roeland Hendrikx Ensemble; a work ... with a touch of folk music. The result? 'Euterpe,' a composition steeped in idioms from the East that makes one dream of the plains of Central Europe and Asia.