AMSTERDAM -- The Holland Festival -- a complex array of music, opera and theater along with unclassifiable ultra-hip events that began May 31 and runs through Sunday -- has had several interlocking themes this year. One has been the music of the German visionary composer Karlheinz Stockhausen, who had a long association with Dutch music and this 61-year-old event.
As part of celebrations planned for Stockhausen's 80th birthday in August, the festival commissioned a new work. And although the composer died unexpectedly in December, he had finished the score. It had its premiere here Thursday night in a memorial concert that spanned his extraordinary career.
The concert was held in Amsterdam's newest venue, the Muziekgebouw aan 't IJ -- a striking, 700-seat, flexible hall that juts out over the River IJ and provides fabulous harbor views.
The program began with "Punkte," Stockhausen's first orchestral score, written in 1952 while he was a student in Paris of the late Olivier Messiaen, whose 100th birthday the festival is also celebrating.
In the middle of the concert was "Litanei 97," a 1997 a cappella work from the composer's late weirdo period. Finally, after a second intermission, came the premiere of "Glanz," one in a series of chamber pieces called "Klang" (Sound) that Stockhausen was working on at the end of his life.
There was to have been one piece for every hour of the day. "Glanz" is Hour 10. Collectively, "Klang" was meant as music for "knocking on heaven's door" as the composer prepared for the next stage of his cosmic career.
If this all seems a bit much, to some extent it was. The concert was overseen by Kathinka Pasveer, one of Stockhausen's companions, so it included the hokey ritualism that the composer wanted for his later mystical pieces.
The Netherlands Chamber Choir members were dressed in cultish unisex white robes and moved in concentric circles as they sang, now and then adding silly choreographed hops.
The three main players onstage for "Glanz" were positioned around a cheesy 4-foot pyramid that began to glow as the piece progressed. They too were made to look preposterous. The men wore white suits. The violist had on a chiffon gown, with petticoats and big bow, perfect for a high school prom in 1960. Colored lights created the mood for each piece.
