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National Post (Canada), Monday, November 27, 2000 "Flux/Reflux- a subtly orchestrated piece by Dutch composer Willem Jeths- was another highlight. Inspired by two deaths- that of the composer's mother and that of a former teacher- it seems to meditate on change and constancy, and the joy and grief of transformation; it makes beautiful use of an Eastern palette- in this case, temple bells and gongs." |
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Fanfare, January/February 2001 JETHS Fas/Nefas. Glenz. Flux/Reflux. Pianoconcerto. David Porcelijn, Thierry Fischer, cond; Noordhollands PO; Tomoko Mukaiyama, Folke Nauta (pn); Peter Brunt (vn). DONEMUS CV88/89 (2 CDs: 90:14) When I was involved in the artistic direction of two orchestras in The Netherlands during the early 1990s, one of the most promising talents among the country's younger composers was Willem Jeths (born Amersfoort, 1959; pronounced "Yets"). These four orchestral works, which range in date from 1993 (Glenz, for violin and strings) by way of 1994 (the Piano Concerto) and 1997 (Fas/Nefas, for piano and orchestra) to 1998 (Flux/Reflux, for a moderate-sized orchestra with double winds), suggest that the promise is, if not unfailingly, still more abundantly than with some young composers being fulfilled. At his best, Jeths is an arresting and powerful voice on the contemporary scene. It is certainly possible to point to influences, most notably in a predilection for glissando effects and clouds of sonority that declare the ancestry of such 20th-century pioneers as Xenakis and Panufnik. But where in lesser hands such elements can degenerate into mere plagiarism, with Jeths it seems to me that there is always a strong personal impulse at work,so that under a surface of seemingly generic modernism- starkly incisive textures, uncompromising harmonic clashes, vehement dynamic contrasts, driving rhythms- the more profound susurration of another, often poetically evocative and mysterious world is clamouring insistently to be heard. In Flux/Reflux, the composer's own comments reveal, the animating principle (if that is not, in the context of Jeths's music prevailingly gloomy. Rather, along with clear-eyed confrontation of the dark forces, there is a bracing exhilaration in his determination to face them down- and if that is not a worthy project for an artist in our time, then I don't know what is. It is inspiring to find the North Holland Philharmonic, one of The Netherlands' remarkable plethora of regional orchestras, championing Jeths's music with excellent two-disc release. Inspiring, and at the same time sadly ironic, because the orchestra, based in Haarlem just 15 miles out of Amsterdam, yet serving a public and fulfilling an artistic mission of its own, just at this moment threatened with extinction in the latest phase of the Dutch government's belt-tightening subsidy cuts. The performances it achieves here, under the passionate leadership of conductors David Porcelijn and Thierry Fischer, joined by three excellent soloists, make the strongest possible case for the music, achieving prodigies of sustained brilliance and, at times, especially in the ravishing final minutes of Glenz, equally sustained lyrical delicacy. There are informative notes by Emile Wennekes, translated with unusual skill by Jonathan Reeder, and producer Ted Diehl has drawn sonorities of the utmost clarity and warmth from the acoustic environment of the Haarlem Concertgebouw. The only thing wrong, in my opinion, is the placement of Fas/Nefas as the opening piece on the first disc. This is a much less successful composition than its companions. Indeed, with its consistent repetition of banal repeated-note figures, it seems to me a rather silly piece, and it could easily prevent a less-than-determined listener from venturing further. I urge readers with an open ear for new sounds, as much for their own sake as for that of the orchestra (whose case might be helped by international sales of these discs, distributed in the US by Albany Records), to try this challenging music for themselves. Start with any of the other three works, and you are unlikely to be disappointed. Bernard Jacobson |
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TROUW 10th of April 2001 "Jeths wrote his masterpiece "Flux/Reflux" as a kind of a requiem in which the ebb and flow of the sound refer to the big themes of life: death and eternity." Anthony Fiumara |
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NRC Handelsblad Flugelhorn Concerto: 'Jeths' most colourful and exuberant composition to date... excitng to the very end', 'a terryfying adventure, a concerto that growls like a hell-hound' Ernst Vermeulen |
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New York Times, 8 February 2005 Intus Trepidare, 3rd string quartet, performed by the KRONOS QUARTET on 5 February, Carnegie Hall New York Willem Jeths, a Dutch composer, was represented by "Intus Trepidare" ("Trembling from Within"), a 2002 work in which manic chordal bursts and eerie sliding music coalesced as a quirky, off-kilter dance. Allan Kozinn |
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Financial Times (London), 25 January 2005 Intus Trepidare, 3rd string quartet, performed by the KRONOS QUARTET 22 January Barbican Centre, London "..... a sublime ending that drifted slowly into silence, left one grasping at thin air." Richard Wolfson |
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Sydney Morning Herald, 3 March 2005 Intus Trepidare, 3rd string quartet performed by the KRONOS QUARTET, Sydney The Dutch composer Willem Jeths's Intus Trepidare (Trembling from Within) was also strongly sectional, like trying to play gutsy riff in a dream where things keep going absurdly wrong. Peter McCallum |
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De Telegraaf, 18 October 2004 Intus Trepidare, 3rd string quartet performed by the KRONOS QUARTET, Eindhoven (World Premiere, 16 October 2004) FASCINATING STRING QUARTET BY WILLEM JETHS The Kronos Quartet has added with Jeths' new string quartet Intus Trepidare (Trembling from Within) an expressionistic and well-constructed piece to their repertoire. The middle-section of Intus Trepidare breaks out in a rather hysterical waltzing quotation from Alban Berg's Lyric Suite which is not meant as a startingpoint for a classical melody and harmony: Jeths makes especially use -as he always does- of soundlayers where density and colour are the headlines. Very strong in this respect is the way colour and atmosphere alternate, and the slowly looming up of something melodical that always seemed to be snowed under untill it breaks out in Berg's paean. Roeland Hazendonk |