I leave it to listeners and my fellow critics to assess the pieces on Friday’s night’s Double Dutch program. After attending the rehearsals and meeting or renewing my acquaintance with the four composers—a fine bunch of very different individuals—I can’t pretend to be objective. Still, the response from my opinionated friends in the house was very positive, even from folks I’d have expected to balk at Florian Maier’s piece for orchestra and death metal band. To my ears Metropole (and guest soloists Claron McFadden, Wu Wei, and Noneuclid) played superbly, and conductor Jurjen Hempel showed that for him, it’s really about the music: bringing out the composers’ intentions, and coaxing the best performances from the players.

If you missed it or even if you didn’t, the concert will be broadcast on Radio 6, Monday 10 November at 22:00. Speaking non-objectively, this is new music you should hear.

The crowd (me included) was still buzzing when it spilled out into the Muziekgebouw’s foyer, which made it hard to concentrate on Theo Loevendie and Ziggurat, gamely holding forth in the southwest corner. Still, it was good to hear Loevendie’s soprano saxophone—his chops seemed to be in better shape than the last time I’d heard him, a decade ago—especially on a wild, almost Balkan duet with vocalist Kristina Fuchs.

Italian pianist Emanuele Arciuli’s master class in the Bamzaal on Saturday morning—there hasn’t been much time for sleep (or blogging) this weekend—began with pianist Bobby Mitchell (born in the US, in Holland for two years) playing a Frederic Rzewski piece written for but as yet unperformed by Arciuli, Stop the War! It’s in the Belgium-based American composer’s not-exactly-whimsical-because-these-are-serious-matters mode, mixing thematic variations with polemics. The title is a cry of protest heard at several points, uttered at varying dynamic levels, as the pianist slaps the front and knocks on the bottom of the piano. 

Mitchell (like Arciuli) has a special interest and genuine feel for Rzewski’s music, and the master was lavish in his praise. Nothing to criticize he said—but he did give Mitchell a couple of pointers on getting a good sound when slapping the piano—he showed him the sweet spot. 

(Two hours later in the Bimhuis, Mitchell was playing celesta with Ensemble Insomnio on an Einar Torfi Einarsson’s Nine Tensions, which won the young Icelandic composer this year’s Henriëtte Bosmans Prijs. I was on the jury—choosing one from the four strong pieces/composers in competition wasn’t easy.)   

Arciuli’s afternoon concert in the Bimhuis was devoted to classical works inspired by jazz pianist/composer Thelonious Monk. The program started with Richard Rijnvos’s ’cross Broadway of 2005, which incorporates bits of Monk’s “Off Minor” and “Criss Cross” and one of Monk’s favorite standards, “Tea for Two” (which Shostakovich had arranged for orchestra in the 1920s, lest we think jazz/pop/classical fusions are a new idea—and thanks to Russian musicologist Luba Guinzbourg for tipping me to that work). 

Then Arciuli played selections from Round Midnight Variations, on Monk’s classic ballad, which he’d commissioned from some 20 composers including jazz pianists Fred Hersch and Uri Caine (though he didn’t play their contributions, alas). John Harbison’s variations were barely a (flowery) arrangement of the original tune; Milton Babbitt’s and George Crumb’s took the theme further afield. Crumb’s had lots of post-Henry Cowell banshee wailing inside the piano. 

Given that Monk had one if the most unorthodox and distinctive piano sounds of the 20th century—and yes, I know how sweeping that statement is—it’s surprising how little if at all these composers tried to evoke his idiosyncratic attack and narrow-interval harmonies. (He was the king of deliberately clunky minor seconds.) Some of Crumb’s harmony hinted at Monk’s sound world—and yet that composer of radical piano music was so unfamiliar with Monk’s music, he had to ask Arciuli for the score. (If only he’d asked for a Monk record instead.) 

Crumb’s having to ask says everything about the relative distance between jazz and classical music in the US versus Holland. What self-respecting Dutch composer would admit to not knowing Monk? 

Arciuli played this sometimes very difficult music extremely well. Afterwards I asked him if his interest was in Monk generally, or just in “’Round Midnight” (which even Monk got tired of—for a long time it was one of the few tunes of his that other musicians played). It’s really just that ballad, he admitted. As jazz pianists go, he prefers the romantic Bill Evans. Then Arciuli was off to Schipol, and on to Washington DC, to play new pieces he’s commissioned from Native American composers.   

In the Bimhuis seven and a half hours later—I dashed up the stairs at the end of Radio Filharmonisch’s evening concert—David Murray’s jazz quartet ended his second set with a set of bass clarinet variations on Monk’s “Let’s Cool One”: a perfect way to cap the day.