deFilharmonie . Edo De Waart

Many a symphonic arrangement has been made of Wagner's operas. Here, composer Henk de Vlieger has not just pasted a number of excerpts together, but has also done much more, succeeding in moulding the orchestral highlights into a new symphonic work lasting nearly an hour. Where necessary, he has replaced voices by instruments and has composed his own bridge passages, all in the spirit of Wagner. This is a convincing ode to the power of Wagner's noble music and impeccable orchestration. The first part of the concert gets going with Messiaen's 'Un sourire', a late work dating from 1989. The composer appears to be looking back at the past with a smile on his face. Using warm pastel colours and ethereal sounds, he seems to be conjuring up the world of Debussy, supplemented naturally - one wouldn't expect anything else - with bird song. This forms an ideal curtain-raiser to 'Bird Concerto with Pianosong', Jonathan Harvey's homage to Messiaen. Advanced electro-acoustics enable Harvey to create a colourful feast of sound, a feast that Messiaen could only dream of. Harvey began this work in California, working no fewer than forty different local bird songs into it. Pianist Ralph van Raat takes on the challenge of combining the grand piano in real time with sampler and synthesizer.