The Ukrainian composer Thomas De Hartmann (1885-1956) had undertaken a classic musical training with Anton Arensky and then Nikolai Taneyev before the death of his mother in 1912 prompted him to begin searching for a spiritual teacher. Four years later he made the encounter that would change his life, with the Armenian philosopher and mystic George Gurdjieff (1877-1949). Gurdjieff had his own musical training, as well as a sharp ear and retentive memory for the folk melodies which he heard on his long travels through central Asia and the middle East. De Hartmann and his wife joined Gurdjieff’s circle of followers, and the two men began to write music to accompany their spiritual exercises. This body of music eventually amounted to around 300 short pieces, of which the indefatigable Jeroen van Veen has recorded the entire published corpus of 170 divided into four volumes.

During lockdown, Jeroen van Veen found himself with the time to immerse himself in this music, which ranges across Asian, Arabic and European systems of rhythm, harmony and tuning, so that he could capture its perfumed mysticism and improvisational character. There are solemn hymns of an Orthodox nobility, atmospheric tone poems such as the ‘Night Procession’, freely pianistic transcriptions of melodies from early-Christian sects such as the Essenes, modal-pentatonic melodies to accompany a ‘Sacred Reading from the Koran’ and to aid an awakening of consciousness in an elevated state of awareness, and then pieces simply titled after their date of composition. While overall meditative in mood, there is a tremendous variety to the Gurdjieff/De Hartmann collection, and Jeroen van Veen’s new recording is an ideally comprehensive way to dive into its riches.

REVIEW:

One can approach these pieces as being parallel to the Magyar folk music that Bartók and Kodály collected in the early 20th century and used as a basis for their own music, except that for the most part Gurdjieff and de Hartmann tried to keep the tunes intact as they stood and didn’t try to develop them in a standard Western classical manner.

Taken a few pieces at a time, the music isn’t bad to listen to, but prolonged exposure to the whole six CDs can bore the more imaginative listener. Despite the intriguing Eastern harmonies, the music is repetitive and tiresome. This is not van Veen’s fault; he is a splendid pianist who plays the slow pieces with great atmosphere and the quicker ones with a lively rhythm; he does his best to engage your interest, and there are certainly some very cute and interesting pieces in this collection, but the lack of any development and the unvarying rhythm of each piece eventually take their toll on the listener. If there is such a thing as high quality background music, this is it. I would also recommend this music in the main as an aid to meditation so long as you realize that every so often there are upbeat numbers in the set and this may spoil your getting deeper into yourself (CD 2 has the most uptempo music).

Of course, the real value of this set is to give a pianist, professional or amateur, who may wish to play some of these pieces the chance to hear them performed. There are other recordings out there of some of this repertoire, but having it all in one place is clearly helpful. A second pianist, Daff by Van Veen, plays with Jeroen on nine numbers if Series II of the Asian Songs and Rhythms, five pieces in Music of the Sayyids and Dervishes First Series, and a few other pieces thereafter.

-- The Art Music Lounge (Lynn René Bayley)

When the minimalism movement originated in the early 1960s, it sprang up organically – some composers played by the rules (even if they were rules of their own invention), while others experimented freely, unaware or unconcerned about how music 'should' be composed. One of those young mavericks was Dennis Johnson, who has now faded into almost complete obscurity after he gave up his musical ambitions for a career in mathematics. But his 1959 composition November can be considered one of the first, if not the first, properly minimalist work. It later went on to inspire La Monte Young to write his prolific Well-Tuned Piano. Complete recordings are few and far between, and this new recording by Jeroen van Veen is the perfect introduction for anyone looking to get back to the roots of Minimalism. Jeroen van Veen is one of the Netherlands' most prominent recording artists. This collection of Minimal Piano Music follows two previous successful albums, available on Brilliant Classics (BC8551 and BC9171). The last album provided a snapshot into the extensive scene of minimalist music today; this one takes us back to how it all began. Featuring several famous pieces from the original minimalist canon – including Philip Glass's Music in Contrary Motion and Terry Riley's Keyboard Studies – there are hours of beautifully relaxing and inspiring music here to enjoy. This release brings the listener back to the roots of Minimalism, all works were written in the seventies of the 20th century, a time when the new aesthetics and perception of music, sound, repetition and time experience were creating a new chapter in music history. The longest piece is the 5 hour “November” by Dennis Johnson, a work in which the player is free to build the intervals and chords according to his own timing and spacing. The other composers in this set are Philip Glass, Tom Johnson, Peter Garland, Terry Riley, Harold Budd and La Monte Young.

An audiophile-grade LP transfer of another hit album of contemporary chillout from the master of piano minimalism, Jeroen van Veen. Perhaps the most influential composer of his generation (certainly among the most successful), electro-acoustic polymath Max Richter defies definition: composer, pianist, producer, remixer, and one of the most prolific of contemporary musical artists. Inspired equally by Bach, punk rock and ambient electronica, Richter has built a unique sonic world, which blends the rigour of a formal classical training with the production wizardry of modern technology. Richter came to fame in the classical sphere with his recomposition of Vivaldi's Four Seasons. He has shown an unerring feel for the chillout vibe which many listeners seek in the contemporary classical genre, resulting in commissions for dozens of television and film soundtracks, ballet scores, and a number of long-form original works, including Sleep, an "eight-hour cradle song" influenced by Mahler. In making this survey of Richter's output on and for the piano, Jeroen van Veen has chosen 18 pieces from Richter's earlier work. His selection includes all of Richter's published music for solo piano, plus Waltz with Bashir: an arrangement by Richter of a Schubert sonata movement, further rearranged for solo piano by Van Veen himself. Each of the pieces is illuminated in the sleeve note with commentary from Richter himself. The aesthetic of Richter's soft melodic swirls is complemented by the medium of LP, which gives a gentle, moody vibe to this recording originally made in 2016. When first released, it received enthusiastic critical recommendations: 'Van Veen knows exactly how to play this music, and I am talking about both his fingers and his head.' (Fanfare) - Max Richter (born in 1966) is one of the most influential composers of his generation. Electro-acoustic polymath Max Richter defies definition: composer, pianist, producer, remixer, and collaborator, and beyond argument one of the most prolific of contemporary musical artists. Inspired equally by Bach, punk rock and ambient electronica, Richter's sonic world blends a formal classical training (he graduated from the Royal Academy of Music, and was a pupil of renowned composer Luciano Berio) with modern technology. - This recording presents Richter's solo piano music up to date. - Dutchman Jeroen van Veen is one of the leading pianists of today focusing on Minimalism and championing a new generation of composers, easily crossing borders between musical styles.

Nyman: Piano Music

Dutch composer Simeon ten Holt is widely acclaimed for his 'Canto Ostinato', one of the most iconic works of Minimal Music. His 'Incantatie IV' is written for 3 pianos, and consists of a complex of 15 layers, whose shifting in both duration, colour and tempo is left to the decision of the performers, thus creating a hybrid between composition and improvisation. According to pianist Jeroen van Veen performing this work is like "looking at the sea: all the time there are changes in color, radiance, and momentum, never an exact repetition". Performed by Jeroen and Sandra van Veen and Tamara Rumiantsev, champions of Ten Holt's music, having performed his music in various environments, such as a train station, a shopping mall (and of course the concert hall...).

TEN HOLT Canto Ostinato. Natalon in E . Aforisme II. Solo Devil’s Dances I–IV. Eadem Sed Aliter • Jeroen van Veen (pn) • BRILLIANT 9434 (5 CDs: 320:09)


This set is designated as Simeon ten Holt: Solo Piano Music Volumes I-V , so one assumes that another release will follow it in due course. This is good news to those of us who have been bitten by the ten Holt bug, and who are snapping up every release that becomes available. In the United States, the situation is now much better than it was just a few years ago, and it is better, in large part, due to the efforts of pianist Jeroen van Veen (and Brilliant Classics), who, with colleague pianists, and by himself, has been busily recording ten Holt’s often mammoth works for one or multiple pianos. He is not the only world-class pianist to be interested in ten Holt’s music, however, but we will get to that point later.


In Fanfare 35:6, I had a lot to say about Canto Ostinato , albeit in a performance by two pianists, namely van Veen and his wife, Sandra. This was included in van Veen’s Minimal Piano Collection, Volumes X-XX set (Brilliant Classics 9171). I’m going to beg the editor’s indulgence by repeating all of it here:


Simeon ten Holt’s Canto Ostinato , [is] an even more large-scale classic that occupied the composer between 1976 and 1979, and a work that has attained a fair measure of popularity, at least in Europe. (I think its time will come in the United States; all it needs is the right set of circumstances.) Like several of ten Holt’s works, Canto Ostinato gives its performers plenty of flexibility. The score states the composer’s preference for performances with four pianos, but he has enthusiastically endorsed Jeroen and Sandra van Veen’s two-piano realization presented here, and it also has been performed with twelve pianists on five pianos! (Other keyboard instruments are possible too.) The score has 106 sections. Performers can use their own discretion concerning dynamics, articulation, the number of repetitions, and the use and combination of alternative parts. It can last for a half hour or longer than two. The composer writes, “A performance of Canto is more like a ritual than a concert. The piece is not in a hurry.” For me, three factors lend the work its peculiar magic. The first is related to rhythm. Each bar is in 10/16 time, overlaid with 2/4 to create two groups of 5/16. Each “quintuplet” is subdivided into 2+3 or 3+2. What this creates, in the listener, is the curiously dance-like sensation of even unevenness, if you will. The second factor is melodic. At first, there is no melody, in the usual sense of the word. However, over time, an angelic “canto” starts to coalesce, like a picture puzzle slowly coming together. When this “canto,” after many teasing minutes of development, reaches its maturity, the cumulative effect, if you have been paying attention, is literally awesome. (I never fail to weep when I get to section 74 of Canto Ostinato , and I have had a similar experience with Meandres , a ten Holt composition from 20 years later.) Having attained seeming Nirvana, ten Holt (or the performers), then evolves away from it almost immediately, and so Canto Ostinato , on this level, becomes a piece about expectation, and not just achievement but also frustration. It’s a very Zen experience. The third factor is related to community. A successful performance of Canto Ostinato depends upon communication and coordination among the performers. One senses (in the present performance, and in others I have heard) that a sort of hive mentality is at work, or that one is listening, not just to a ritual, but to a biological process. Much as I love music, I would rarely describe it as organic. For me, there are two prominent exceptions, though: some of Sibelius, and all of Simeon ten Holt.


Of course, the present recording, which dates from the fall of 2012 (like everything else in this collection), removes the third factor enumerated above because all of these are solo performances. I think I understand ten Holt’s preference for performances, at least of Canto Ostinato , involving multiple pianos. Played solo, the music remains highly effective, but the ineffable and moving sense of community is absent here. Otherwise, it is striking how similar this new solo recording of Canto is to the one by van Veen and his wife in the Minimal Piano Collection set. The total timing (78:15) is just a minute shorter than its predecessor, and isn’t it convenient that it all fits on one CD? (A four-piano version recorded in the ’80s and released by Composer’s Voice/Donemus lasts over 150 minutes and requires three discs, and let me tell you, those disc-changes are a real letdown!) There’s no sense that the music’s development is being rushed, but I think, generally speaking, the more performers one has, the longer it takes to perform it effectively. In a review of piano music by Philip Glass (also in this issue), I commented that van Veen was a more subjective performer than the composer himself. In ten Holt’s music, however, I find that van Veen is less personal—which I suppose is another way of saying less romantic—than other pianists who have recorded it, namely Ivo Janssen (on Void), and on the aforementioned three-CD extravaganza, Gerard Bouwhuis, Gene Carl, Cees van Zeeland, and Arielle Vernède. Still, I have every reason to believe that van Veen’s playing realizes the composer’s intentions completely.


So, where this new release really comes into its own is in the remaining four discs, because this is great music too, and there is less competition. (In some cases, I think, there is none at all, at least on disc.) Solo Devil’s Dance I was composed in 1959 and lasts only 4:10. The remaining three works in this series are much later (1986, 1990, and 1998, respectively) and much longer too: 67:43, 45:55, and 38:41. The first is an etude whose basis is an essentially unrelenting triple rhythm passed from one hand to the other, with a—well, impish counterpoint. No surprise: It sounds utterly unlike anything else on these discs, but one can sense the presence of ten Holt’s mind, even if one can’t exactly hear ten Holt’s voice. With the second, we are back in familiar, i.e., minimalist, territory. An odd, nervous rhythm and a melodic pattern are quickly established, and over the course of 67 minutes it is developed. With Philip Glass, one senses that his favorite geometric shape is a square. Ten Holt, on the other hand, probably was enamored of pentagons and heptagons. Solo Devil’s Dance II is jazzy, without ever turning into jazz, and eternally unsettled. As in Canto , tension rises, is dissipated, and rises again; Glass is rarely this dramatic. It sounds like a terrible finger-buster for any pianist, but I imagine stamina and concentration are even bigger issues. Fortunately, listeners don’t have to fear for the fingers. If they are receptive, their concentration should be stimulated by the ever changing but always the same landscape of shifting accents, phrase lengths, and by each new section of the score (there are 111!) in which a new puzzle piece, or a new clue (if you will) is added. Kees Wieringa’s version of this work can be downloaded as an mp3 from Amazon. I haven’t heard more than an excerpt—I have yet to feel that downloaded mp3s are worth my time and money, so any comparisons I make with mp3s in this review are based solely on brief excerpts—but for what it’s worth, Wieringa’s version is only 28 seconds longer. Ivo Janssen’s mp3 is only half as long, and is a little slower.


Solo Devil’s Dance III is built on similar plans, but it strikes me as a more genial piece. If its predecessor is obsessive, it is cheerfully industrious, as if one were overlooking a sort of musical factory in which the workers are notes and their products are phrases and successively larger musical structures. The music burbles along happily, and it really does seem to dance. One wonders if the melodic material’s resemblance, at times, to Till’s theme from Till Eulenspiegels lustige Streiche was accidental. Otherwise, there is nothing demonic here! In fact, extended sections in the piano’s stratosphere suggest fairies, perhaps from A Midsummer Night’s Dream , more than anything horned. Wieringa’s mp3 is almost 20 minutes shorter, as he moves through the work’s 77 (!) sections!


What makes the Solo Devil’s Dances demonic, perhaps, is the demands that they place on the performer. (Van Veen is certainly up to their various challenges.) An additional demonic element that appears in Solo Devil’s Dance IV is a fixation with the interval of a tritone, the “diabolus in musica.” This piece is a particularly cruel task for the pianist, as it is fast, lengthy, and more intricate in its patterning than its predecessors. If Solo Devil’s Dance II is obsessive, this last member of the family carries obsession to its most driven extremes. It’s an etude from hell. At 18: 14, Ivo Janssen’s mp3 of this work is only half the length of van Veen’s performance, and he adopts a somewhat slower tempo, so clearly he takes fewer repeats than van Veen. (As I mentioned above, in my description of Canto , ten Holt’s scores generally give performers a lot of latitude.) This work contains 89 “separate musical objects,” which I suppose is just another way of indicating “sections.” This was ten Holt’s final work, although he did not die until 2012.


Earlier, I used the phrase, “ever changing but always the same.” That is a rough English translation of the Latin phrase Eadem Sed Aliter , the title of a work in 113 sections from 1995 also included in this collection. To quote from the booklet note (van Veen’s?), “the left hand is shifted two sixteenths from the right hand—this creates a big challenge for the thumbs of both hands, like in the music of Franz Liszt where the thumbs were first used to play melodies. The ping-pong-style playing with accents, together with building layers (getting louder and softer), turn this into an interesting piece.” The music has a plaintive quality, as if it were begging to be released from its unceasing activity and lack of resolution (harmonic and otherwise). As with the other works in this collection, I can’t even begin to imagine the endurance and concentration required to perform it, and van Veen has both my admiration and my sympathy! An mp3 by Janssen is a few minutes shorter (33: 49), and in this work, his tempo is even faster than van Veen’s. Madness!


The two remaining works date from the 1970s. Aforisme II (1974) is receiving its first recording here. It is, in a sense, the seed that produced Canto Ostinato , as it is a 6/8 version of the Canto melody, with an accompaniment of broken chords (imagine a barcarolle.) The Chopinesque bit of sweetness is just four minutes long, and, if a score were to be published, I predict it would quickly appear on every third teenage piano student’s recital. Natalon in E also is atypical. There are five movements in contrasting tempos and moods, and ranging from four to 11 minutes in length. The material in each movement is characteristic of ten Holt, but its development is far more concise. Like Aforisme II , this is ten Holt “lite,” although I don’t mean to denigrate it with that adjective, only to imply that it is more accessible to performers and listeners who might not generally be interested in Minimalism or “contemporary music,” whatever that is.


The booklet contains, in addition to unsigned notes about some (not all, unfortunately) of the works, a short essay about the composer himself, and about van Veen as an interpreter of his music. This originally appeared in Fanfare 33:5 and is written by Alan Swanson, who took advantage of the opportunity to bang the drum for ten Holt before I did. I’m glad he did. Since I discovered it a few years ago, Simeon ten Holt’s music has become important to me; it has given me great intellectual and emotional satisfaction. I am very happy that Jeroen van Veen’s advocacy, not least through these recordings, has made it easier for new audiences to become exposed to it. Please, however you do it, introduce yourself to Simeon ten Holt.


FANFARE: Raymond Tuttle

Simeon ten Holt’s unmistakable minimalist style is the driving force behind Canto Ostinato, one of the composer’s most famous works. Canto Ostinato is the best-loved Dutch piano composition of the 20th century, with its mesmerising melodies never failing to soothe the mind.

The instruments and number of performers for the piece are unspecified; written ‘for keyboard instruments’, the work has been recorded many times with piano, but this unique set brings together 12 arrangements of the work – for piano, as well as for organ, marimba and synthesizer. With a variety of recording venues ranging from throughout The Netherlands to Canada, this compilation is a must-have addition to any classical music collection.

Jeroen van Veen is a leading light in modern piano performance, as well as a successful composer. Chairman of the Simeon ten Holt Foundation, he has won critical acclaim with ensembles such as The International Piano Quartet, DJ Piano and Jeroen van Veen & Friends.

Other information:
- Recorded in 1999 - 2013.
- Anyone having experienced the power of Canto Ostinato by Simeon ten Holt will come under the spell of the hallucinatory effect of this iconic work, the most famous Dutch work for piano of the 20th century, one of the “classics” of minimal music.
- Jeroen van Veen and friends present the work in a variety of arrangements, ranging from piano solo through multiple pianos, organ, marimbas and synthesizers, each revealing other aspects of this deceptively simple work in which the harmonies shift imperceptibly in slowly changing waves.
- Liner notes on the composer by the artist, who worked in close collaboration till the composer’s death last year.

Einaudi: Waves, The Piano Collection, Composer Ludovico Einaudi, Artist Jeroen van Veen piano, Format 7 CD, Ludovico Einaudi's aesthetic of emptiness has won him legions of fans worldwide, and Jeroen van Veen's survey of the piano music which is central to Einaudi's style belongs with his survey of minimalists including Glass and Nyman who are less concerned in music as an expressive language than as a commercial artefact. Likewise, his listeners absorb the music less in the sense of engaging with meaning than as backdrop to activity or release from stress. The works on this compendious collection are nearly all 'songs' of between 3 and 7 minutes, with the influence from pop culture that this brevity implies, and sharing with the pop world an economically aware employment of simplicity and repetition so as not unduly to tax the attention-span of the consumer. As Jeroen van Veen remarks, 'Contrary to ordinary classical music, minimal music demands little of the listener but to escape life's troubles for a moment; no comprehensive musical structures ask their full attention.' All his compositions are more or less based on the music he heard when he was a child, when his mother played Chopin Preludes. Einaudi (grandson of the politician Luigi Einaudi) loved the almost hypnotic soft sound of the upright piano. Because of her he started to play the piano and tried to find his own way. The melody (if there is any at all) always goes down, hardly leaving the classical path of harmonies. His music is ambient, calm, meditative and often introspective, drawing on minimalism and contemporary pop. Ludovico Einaudi may well become the "Satie of the 21st century". His minimalist, deceptively simple piano works reach a massive audience well beyond the strict boundaries of traditional classical music. CDs with his music break sales records, the hypnotic calmness of his works being the perfect recipe against modern world's stress and fatigue. Einaudi's piano works fit in logically with Jeroen van Veen's survey of Minimalist Piano Music, and this 7-CD set is the most substantial collection available at present.

This release presents the best music of Ludovico Einaudi, whose aesthetic of emptiness has won him legions of fans worldwide, and Jeroen van Veen’s survey of the piano music which is central to Einaudi’s style belongs with his survey of minimalists including Glass and Nyman who are less concerned in music as an expressive language than as a commercial artefact. Likewise, his listeners absorb the music less in the sense of engaging with meaning than as backdrop to activity or release from stress.

Ludovico Einaudi may well become the “Satie of the 21st century”. His minimalist, deceptively simple piano works reach a massive audience well beyond the strict boundaries of traditional classical music. CDs with Einaudi's music break sales records, the hypnotic calmness of his works being the perfect recipe against modern world’s stress and fatigue.

Other information:

– Recorded in 2013.
– Notes on the composer.
– Notes on the artist.

Along with the two books of piano studies by Gyorgy Ligeti, the Etudes of Philip Glass have taken their place as modern classics of the literature, serving both a didactic purpose to train the fingers and minds of their performers, but also bringing their unique soundworlds to new audiences. Glass himself remarked that the first book, compiled from work between 1991 and 2012, had a twin objective, ‘to explore a variety of tempi, textures and piano techniques. At the same time it was meant to serve as a pedagogical tool by which I would improve my piano playing.’ The studies of Book 2 (2012-14) are often bolder in finding new structures and fresh keyboard colours. Each of the 20 Etudes handles a specific piano technique, and the two books are united by the instantly recognisable quirks of Glass’s harmonic language and, as Jeroen van Veen remarks in his booklet note, ‘in almost all the etudes, endurance is the main issue to overcome’. Most recent of the pianist’s many Brilliant Classics recordings of Minimalist music have been albums dedicated to the genre’s godfather, Erik Satie and his successors including Michael Nyman and Max Richter. ‘Van Veen’s beautiful and texturally varied sonority, his long-lined sensibility, and his intense focus draw you in,’ remarked Classics Today of the complete Satie box. ‘Sample the Nocturnes’ sustained, almost otherworldly serenity, or the subtle spacing of notes throughout the Veritables preludes flaques, and you’ll hear how completely and masterfully van Veen conveys his intentions, abetted by superb, full-bodied sonics… His fascinating and riveting pianism is well worth Brilliant Classics’ attractive budget price.’

Over the course of musical history, the Prelude developed from a short, semi-improvised introduction to a larger scale work into a work of art in its own right. Champion of Minimal Music Jeroen van Veen writes about his preludes: “composed in a major and minor keys in the order of Chopin’s Preludes the basic idea was to see if I would limit myself to just a few chords and techniques if I could create different works.” The booklet contains informative liner notes by the composer, himself.

Famed worldwide as a film composer, Ryiuchi Sakamoto began his career as a pianist, creating patterns, phrases and innovative arrangements before joining his first commercial electronic pop band in 1978, the Yellow Magic Orchestra. Around the same time, he worked on his first solo album, the Thousand Knives of Ryuichi Sakamoto (1978), which blends up-to-date electronic techniques with an old-fashioned gift for good tunes. Riot in Lagos brought him fame beyond Japan, and he went on to work with many top producers of pop, dance and electro. In 1983, Nagisa Oshima's Merry Christmas Mr. Lawrence launched Sakamoto's career as a film composer, which has gone from strength to strength with scores for The Last Emperor (1987) and The Revenant (2015). All these pieces feature in Jeroen van Veen's survey, which is based on the best modern edition of these scores and often differs from Sakamoto's own, partly improvised recordings. Classical listeners will appreciate Sakamoto's breadth of reference: to Chopin (Ubi), Bach (Andata, Solari), Glass (Bibo no Aozora), Satie (Opus), Brahms (Intermezzo) and Ravel (Bachata), for example. But his language of minimalist jazz is one enjoyed around the world as music that gives listeners the space to think and work and create for themselves.

The journey towards simplicity so comprehensively charted by Jeroen van Veen’s discography over the past decade begins chronologically with the unique world of Erik Satie. In the quietly unique music of this ever-underrated pioneer lies the seeds of so much that was to come to fruition in the latter half of the last turbulent century. Satie belonged neither to the Impressionists nor the Modernists nor any other school, and it took John Cage and the New York modernists of the 1950s to rediscover him as more than a provocateur or a purveyor of salon trifles. Yet, at much the same time on the other side of the Iron Curtain, Soviet-era composers were starting to chafe against both the tenets of serialism and also the requirements of the State for neo-Romantic hymns to labour and triumph. Arvo Pärt was reaching for the same destination as the American triumvirate of Adams, Glass and Reich, only from the other end of the stylistic spectrum. The English critic and composer Michael Nyman first used the term ‘Minimalism’ in print, and it stuck. The last 40 years have witnessed an explosion of popularity and wider interest in a world of music that transcends the four-bar sequences and relentless rhythms of pop, while forsaking the ivory tower of modernism, to offer music that speaks to listeners in search of quiet and stillness, music to meditate by as well as music to stir the blood. And for the last 15 years Jeroen van Veen has recorded much of it in his home studio in the Netherlands, as well as achieving great popular success with performances much farther afield. His recordings have been acclaimed for their nuances of touch as well as their technical command of music demanding formidable reserves of precision and patience.

This album features Christmas music for the piano in a timeless journey through the decades and centuries. These songs have been through a remarkable evolution over the course of several centuries, with the changes they have undergone reflecting the shifting musical styles and cultural influences that prevailed in various times.

The most complete collection ever issued of the Dutch Minimalist master, including the famous Canto Ostinato but also many previously unreleased recordings, all made by a pianist with an international reputation in the field of Minimalism. ‘Given his music’s virtuoso demands, and its spirituality, it is tempting to call him the Franz Liszt of minimalism.’ This assessment of Simeon Ten Holt by an American reviewer points to Ten Holt’s originality, his industry and his influence over modern Minimalism in the generations after its 1960s birth in America.

As with Liszt in Weimar during the 1850s and 60s, many paths have led to and from Ten Holt’s music. It has long been recognised that with Canto Ostinato, his flexible sequence of 92 variations on a simple bass-line, Ten Holt built a masterpiece to stand alongside the likes of In C by Terry Riley, and Steve Reich’s Music for 18 Musicians. However, this box-set shows how much more there is to Ten Holt.

The boy Simeon was introduced to the world of music by hearing his father play the first movement of Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata one night, and from then on he was entranced by the possibilities of stretching time through patterns. Late in life, he remarked: ‘I am the time, and I have the time.’ This box traces his development as has never been possible before, from the early untitled Compositions, comparable to the Abstract Expressionist canvases of the time, through miniatures such as sets of Epigrams and Aphorisms, to the triumph of Canto Ostinato, and then far beyond, to the mystical cycles of Lemniscaat, Horizon and finally the renewed vigour of Eadem Sed Aliter (‘The Same but Different’), a late piece which, as the composer remarked, ‘takes away the limits of the concepts of ‘beginning’ and ‘ending’, ‘before’ and ‘after’.’

As he explains in a personal introduction, Jeroen van Veen first encountered the music of Ten Holt as a child, listening to the radio to (as he discovered much later) the premiere of Horizon: ‘the notes melted together to create such a rich tapestry of colour.’ He has since performed Canto Ostinato and the rest of Van Veen’s music many times and in many countries, and in 2001 he became the founder chair of the Simeon Ten Holt Foundation. His performances, as recognised by critics in publications worldwide, are beautifully recorded and bear the stamp of complete authority in this music.

Yann Tiersen’s (b.1970) music traverses genres from French folk music and chanson to minimal, avant-garde and post-rock. The French composer and multi-instrumentalist is primarily known for writing the music for the film Amélie. In 2016 he made the album EUSA, then in 2021, he ventured a step further towards electronic music with his new album Kerber (2021). The latter is a beautifully structured, immersive and thoughtfully constructed electronic world, composed on the island of Ushant where Tiersen now resides. The title of each track on these two albums refers to a specific place on Ushant. Kerber, for example, is named after a chapel in a small village on the island. Some offer the perfect soundtrack for contemplation on a long walk or staring out of a window on a train journey. Others seem predestined to be background music for study or relaxation. With each song, your imagination can easily conjure a scene from a movie: a breakup after a fight in a cosy café or a nature documentary showing two baby birds opening their eyes for the very first time. After a frightening experience with a mountain lion in California, Tiersen came to a realisation. He needed to discover himself more intimately, and to do that, he needed to better know his home, Ushant. In order to understand his home and discover himself, he decided to draw a musical map of the island, of which EUSA is volume one; it contains ten piano works about ten places on Ushant. ‘I think there is a similarity between the infinite big and the infinite smallness of everything,’ explains Yann Tiersen. ‘It's the same experiment looking through a microscope as it is a telescope.’ This exploration of the micro and the macro has permeated much of Tiersen’s career, and Kerber once again shows the vast expansiveness and intricate detail of his work. This isn’t a collection about isolation; it is more an expression of being conscious of your immediate environment, and your place within it. For Tiersen, this approach extracts the same degree of profundity as spending the evening studying the stars – which he himself does. ‘You can look at things that are thousands of light years away and relate your own existence to this really cosmic element,’ he says. ‘But you get that same feeling with the things all around you.’ ‘A leading exponent of minimalism today’ (Fanfare). Pianist Jeroen van Veen has selected to perform the principle 17 works from these two of Tiersen’s albums for his own Island album. ‘The result here is a fresh and rather naked version of Eusa and Kerber that I will play in public quite a bit,’ Van Veen relates, ‘especially for my lie-down concerts, and the music makes a nice addition to my other existing programmes. In these works you can hear the emptiness of the island; although I’ve never been to Ushant, I can imagine the beauty of nature and the music ebbing and flowing like the ocean’s tide, low and high, day in, day out.’ French composer Yann Tiersen (born 1970) is one of the most popular and successful film music writers of today. His soulful and melancholic music finds its traces in folk music, French chansons, musette waltzes, street music, but also in the minimalism of Satie, Glass and Nyman. His international breakthrough came with the music for the French blockbuster “Amélie”. Later followed “Goodbey, Lenin!” and others. The composer’s two new albums, “Eusa” and “Kerber” are inspired by the small island of Ouessant, where he currently lives. Less than 16 square kilometers in size, it lies off the coast of Brittany in northwestern part of France boasting little apart from meadows and granite rocks. “Eusa” is the Breton name for Ouessant, “Kerber” is a little chapel on the island. Tiersen perfectly expresses the isolation of the island, its barren and wild landscape, but also its place in the vast universe when looking into space and its stars. Dutch pianist, pioneer and champion of Minimalism Jeroen van Veen plays the piano in his inimitable way: focused, serene and hypnotizing. A worthy successor of Van Veen’s successful recordings for Brilliant Classics of piano music by Glass, Pärt, Yiruma and many others.

Among the best-selling composers of our time, Ludovico Einaudi has won a following of millions through his distinctively calm, smoothly unfolding works, which spin unbroken songs from the simplest material and cast a spell of relaxed enchantment over their audience. Jeroen van Veen is the Dutch pianist who has likewise won an international following for his many albums of Minimalist piano music on Brilliant Classics, including a previous collection of Einaudi’s music, ‘Waves’ (9452). ‘Clouds’ is another 7CD collection, which ranges across 30 years of Einaudi’s oeuvre, from the Stanze (‘Verses’) of 1992 to the Underwater collection from 2022. In fact, as a relatively early work, Stanze contains intriguing and uncharacteristic elements: as the composer himself explained, ‘I had one goal: to remove, and leave space. The title refers to the poetic stanzas but also to invisible spaces to be inhabited with the mind.’

In 2012, Einaudi produced a project called Elements as a tribute to the memory of his mentor and teacher Luciano Berio. Each instrumental song of Elements evolves from a small gesture or motif, evoking a journey through fragmented thoughts and feelings. In a similar way, but on a much grander scale, the Seven Days Walking project of 2019 developed from a walking tour of the Alps, where Einaudi had the idea of observing and evoking the times of day and moods across the cycle of an entire week. This cycle finds the composer at his most bewitchingly minimalist, drawing in the listener to a space of private reflection. The Underwater collection thrives on the interplay of pure, sparkling and warm, melancholic sounds and invites you to forget the hustle and bustle of everyday life. The tempo is restful and the pulse flowing even in a seascape such as ‘Swordfish’.

Finally, Jeroen van Veen has selected an album’s worth of Einaudi’s prolific work in the world of film, in which his songs often present a mirror to troubled souls and an oasis of calm amid violence.

Eight years ago, a two-album collection of piano music by Arvo Pärt became a Brilliant Classics best-seller (95053, now reissued on LP), with Jeroen van Veen’s playing capturing both the zeitgeist and the rapturous stillness of the Estonian composer’s aesthetic. ‘Jeroen van Veen’s recording can stand alongside the best from any source, and this set is worthy of high praise in every regard’ (MusicWeb International). ‘All played with insight and a crystalline tone… almost unbearably beautiful’ (BBC Music Magazine). This sequel reprises a selection of those ‘modern classic’ recordings, and adds a trio of newly made recordings for cello and piano. Jeroen van Veen is joined by his pianist wife Sandra, and cellist Joachim Eijlander, to present a portrait of Pärt the man and the composer, attentive to and yet at times purposefully isolated from the turbulent currents of music in the second half of the last century.

The album opens with a new recording of Fratres in its familiar cello-and-piano guise, and continues with masterpieces of ‘new simplicity’ from the 1970s such as Für Alina and Pari Intervallo. Such pieces began to set out the harmonic world of ‘tintinnabuli’, characterized by open and slow-moving harmonies, for which Pärt later became famous worldwide. The Ukuaru Valss affords a rare glimpse of the composer’s lighter side, before an extended version of Für Alina and then the unearthly, imperishable echoes of Spiegel im Spiegel, which distils the sound of Part as much as any other single piece. The album concludes with Pärtomania, a newly written 20-minute tribute to the composer’s soundworld by Jeroen van Veen, scored for the same string-instrument and piano combination as Fratres and Spiegel im Spiegel. Van Veen himself discusses the unique world of Pärt’s music in a booklet introduction.

This LP features Christmas music for the piano in a timeless journey through the decades and centuries. These songs have been through a remarkable evolution over the course of several centuries, with the changes they have undergone reflecting the shifting musical styles and cultural influences that prevailed in various times. The development in popularity of the piano as a household instrument in the 19th century contributed to the spread of traditional Christmas carols and tunes. Christmas songs were made more approachable to a wider audience because of the attractive piano arrangements that composers such as Felix Mendelssohn and Franz Liszt devised for them. Then, throughout the 20th century, Christmas songs were composed in a wide variety of musical styles. Jazz, blues, and popular music were all significant influences on composers during this period. Composers such as Irving Berlin created Christmas songs centred around the piano that went on to become instant classics. An example that epitomizes this era is Irving Berlin's 'White Christmas'. The growth of Christmas carols arranged for piano is a monument to the everlasting spirit of the Christmas holiday as well as the development of musical styles throughout the course of history. For this LP, Jeroen van Veen has collected both well-known and lesser-known Christmas songs from all over the world and arranged many of them for his own piano performance. The programme is freely, alternating slow with up-tempo and virtuosic with intimate songs. Some of the tracks are medleys combining two or more songs. Highlights include the 'Christmas Fantasy' by Alexander Rosenblatt, a virtuoso piece that combines several tunes, and the Fred Oldenburg version of 'Silent Night', written in answer to a challenge from some of the jazz teachers at the Enschede conservatory to use the strangest chords to harmonise the well-known song. Dutch pianist, pioneer and champion of Minimalism Jeroen van Veen plays the piano in his inimitable way: focused, serene and hypnotizing. Praise for Jeroen van Veen on Brilliant Classics: 'Van Veen is quite brilliant in the quirky fourth [Philip Glass Etude] and his reading of the exquisite, valedictory 20th is excellent.' Gramophone. 'Jeroen van Veen's recording can stand alongside the best from any source, and this [Arvo Part] set is worthy of high praise in every regard.' MusicWeb International. 'Van Veen is a supremely eloquent performer of his own music. His touch is remarkably varied, carrying none of the hammered urgency of, for example, Michael Nyman's performances of Nyman.' Fanfare.

The pianist, composer, producer and renaissance musician Jeroen van Veen has played many concerts with both his wife Sandra and his brother Maarten, and has recorded with both of them for Brilliant Classics. The present compilation brings together a unique sequence of masterpieces for the genre in live and studio performances, made between 1992 and 2008, and given by the brothers as Piano Duo Van Veen.

This pocket history of the piano duo opens – as it must – with the F minor Fantasy of Schubert. All elements of Schubert's art can be found in the Fantasy: his gift for a sublime, gently unfolding melody; melancholy harmonic turns from major to minor; high drama within a spacious symphonic design; intricate counterpoint in the finale. Less well known but no less accomplished in its way is the set of Beethoven variations by Camille Saint-Saëns, a polished transformation of a minuet theme. This 1992 studio recording concludes with a pair of 20th-century pieces which capitalize on the energy and momentum of the piano duo genre as a whole: La valse of Ravel and the Paganini Variations of Lutoslawski, which never fail to raise the pulse and receive here barnstorming performances. The adrenaline level increases further with a sequence of live performances on album 2, opening with Rachmaninov’s gorgeous Russian Rhapsody and continuing with The Rite of Spring in the version which Stravinsky first performed with his friends in Paris prior to the ballet’s notorious public premiere in 1911. In his Monologue of 1964, Zimmermann developed the thread of his Dialogue for two pianos and orchestra with a collage technique which quotes from Bach, Mozart and Beethoven in which the two pianists muse almost to themselves at times. Rounding off this collection in epic style is the apotheosis of Messiaen’s Visions de l’Amen.

REVIEW:

This is a spectacular piano duo release. Of the 2 discs one was recorded in the studio (one piano) and the other in concert (two pianos). The repertoire here is mostly “famous works”, but the Zimmermann falls outside of the title’s range. There are a lot of brilliant, virtuosic pieces here, and the Ravel and Stravinsky are best known in their orchestral guises. Among people who listen to a lot of 4-hand repertoire, everything here, except perhaps the Zimmermann, will be in our libraries. This is a release I’ll keep on my active listening stack for quite some time.

-- American Record Guide (James Harrington)

Canto Ostinato is the work that defines the legacy of the composer Simeon ten Holt, who died in 2012 at the age of 89. There are 106 sections of repeating five-beat patterns whose patterned, repetitive but gradually evolving repetition produce a mesmerizing effect on the listener – a dance-like sense of even unevenness – akin to masterpieces from the US minimalist school such as Steve Reich’s Music for 16 Musicians and Philip Glass’s Music in 12 Parts. However, the sections need not be repeated literally, and the performers can vary the dynamics, the manner of playing (legato vs. staccato, for example), and the octave in which the material is played.

Ten Holt completed Canto Ostinato in 1979 for an instrumentation of three pianos and electronic organ, but the cycle has proved itself adaptable to several different combinations of keyboard instruments, and these versions were brought together by Jeroen van Veen on a compendium produced by Brilliant Classics in 2014. ‘Canto Ostinato XL’ (9453) included this two-piano scoring as well as versions for prepared pianos, organ and marimbas, but Jeroen and Sandra van Veen have re-recorded it in 2021; the fourth version they have produced, which brings together all the varieties of arrangement and articulation developed through the course of concert performances given across the world. ‘Tonality after the death of tonality’, Ten Holt described the language of Canto Ostinato, and Jeroen van Veen compares its style to the music of Chopin: tranquil, immersive, melancholic and romantic. He worked closely with the composer over many years and can justly be regarded as the most authoritative living performer of his music.

REVIEW:

For listeners coming to this music for the first time, you don’t know what you have been missing. I think a two-piano performance that lasts a little more or less than 120 minutes is a good place to start. (In his introduction to the score, ten Holt actually expressed a preference for four pianos, although the premiere was played by three pianos and an electronic organ.) The two van Veens recorded it together for the first time in 1996, and have recorded it on two pianos at least one other time (in 2008) before this new version from 2021. I think some of their earlier versions (alone or with other musicians) have been more dramatic (with an imaginative performer or performers, ten Holt’s works can be hair-raising, at times), but no one, least of all the composer, said that Canto Ostinato needs to be dramatic. With this new version, one is newly impressed by the music’s ability to maintain its core identity no matter how much the details change, and the details this time make the music sound a little more contemporary and a little less Romantic. Your mileage may vary. As for me, I am glad to add this version to my already not minimal ten Holt collection. 

-- Fanfare

An audiophile LP transfer for an
immersive tribute to a remote island
off the coast of Brittany.
Having become celebrated for his score
to Amélie (2001), the French composer
moved to the island of Ushant
(Ouessant/Eusa), and this album is a
musical tribute to his home, comprising
ten pieces about ten specific places on
the island. In 2016, Tiersen published a
collection of pieces called Eusa, which
Jeroen van Veen has combined with his
2021 collection, Kerber, named after a
chapel on the island, to produce Island.
The album has been a best-seller on CD
for its contemplative mood and beauty.
Among the 10 tracks, some offer the
perfect soundtrack for contemplation on
a long walk or staring out of a window on
a train journey. Others seem predestined
to be background music for study or
relaxation. The pieces sound at times
dreamy and wistful, at times bittersweet,
at other times happily playful. With each
song, your imagination can easily conjure
a scene from a movie: a breakup after a
fight in a cosy café or a nature
documentary showing two baby birds
opening their eyes for the very first
time.
This isn’t a collection about isolation;
it’s more an expression of awareness of
your own environment and your place
within it: a sonic encapsulation of the
hyper-local. Tiersen relates this
approach to a night spent studying the
stars – which he himself does. ‘You can
look at things that are thousands of
light years away and relate your own
existence to this really cosmic element,’
he says. ‘But you get that same feeling
with the things all around you.’

A half-speed mastered, new LP transfer of a best-selling album in the acclaimed series of minimalist piano music recorded by Jeroen van Veen for Brilliant Classics.
‘Throughout, the playing’s brilliant, confident, and sonorous’: this album of the piano output of John Adams won glowing reviews when it was first released in 2017. As an indefatigable champion of minimalist music from both sides of the Atlantic, Jeroen van Veen had recorded some of these pieces before, within his compendious ‘Minimal Piano Collection’ which became an essential acquisition for collectors of the most influential classical style in music during the last 60 years.

The 2017 remake of China Gates is even more opulent as a performance, superbly engineered to catch van Veen’s subtleties of touch at the piano, and thus eminently suitable for a high-spec vinyl transfer. ‘There’s something quite nice about encountering interpretations of these perennial Adams favourites that sound so comfortable,’ continued the Arts Fuse review: ‘a pianist enjoying himself, freely exploring the enveloping diatonicism of the music.’

Adams regards Phrygian Gates (1977) as his ‘first mature composition’, and it may seem strange that he has not since written more for solo piano than the four pieces gathered here, but as Jeroen van Veen argues in his sleeve-note essay, these pieces between them say all that needs to be said in terms of the composer’s piano style.
Mostly composed in a West Coast beach hut, the gentle flow, rolling swells and thundering breakers of Phrygian Gates add up to a half-hour, overpowering analogy for melodic waves. From the same year, China Gates distils this energy into a five-minute work of memorably concentrated stillness. Adams left off the piano for another 20 years until writing Hallelujah Junction for two pianos in 1996. Van Veen gave the Dutch premiere, and he remains an outstanding, authoritative advocate of Adams’s music.