I fear not wave nor wind!

In 2001, on my fiftieth birthday, a CD was released by the Muziekgroep Nederland with some then recent chamber music pieces of mine: the Clarinet Quintet, Opus 51 (1998), the Sextet for strings, Opus 55 (2000) and En Hollande for soprano and string quartet, Opus 56 (2000). The performances by soprano Nienke Oostenrijk, clarinettist André Kerver, the Daniel Quartet, and the Valerius Ensemble were received with enthusiasm and the reviews were full of praise.

Shortly after the release of this production, which was very special for me, the Muziekgroep Nederland was dismantled. Thus, the CD ended up in storage in Belgium and disappeared from sight. Because of this, I am pleased that Etcetera has decided that the CD “En Hollande”, together with new recordings of more recent work, is being released on the occasion of my sixty-fifth birthday.

The (now seven) chamber music works on both CDs give a good overview of my compositions during the last two decades. Around 1990, I noticed that my work came more and more spontaneously, with a natural amalgamation of all the techniques that I had learned and tried in my compositions since I was a teenager.

It strikes me that I continue to feel the desire to tell stories repeatedly, and that the technical means that I need in order to do so present themselves out of these stories. At the same time that I have always written “larger” works, I also wrote “smaller” works, especially for occasions such as anniversaries, birthdays, and other special moments in life. Surprisingly enough, sometimes these every day occurrences turned into causes for “larger” works, such as the fiftieth birthday of the State of Israel, or the departure of Stefan Metz from the Orlando Festival in Kerkrade.

Leo Samama