Ruysdael Quartet & Peter Holtslag - Van Nieuwkerk: Songs of War & Peace (2025) [Official Digital Download 24/48]

Baroque-inspired, rousingly composed, agile and dramatic, performed by Peter Holtslag, who performs worldwide, and the renowned Ruysdael Kwartet: Gordon Jacobs's famous suite and Willem Wander Van Nieuwkerk's "Songs of War and Peace."

Van Nieuwkerk has written a retrospective on the Thirty Years' War, which began with the Defenestration of Prague and ended in Münster, among other places, in 1648. In his "Songs of War and Peace," he draws on German, Dutch, and Bohemian folk songs, lamentations, and war songs, hymns, and sacred songs from the 17th century. His melodic "new classical music" (Van Nieuwkerk), which blends early music and classical forms as well as pop and rock, makes the effects of war tangible: violence and destruction, death and loss, intoxication, but also joy and hope.

Plus Schulhoff's "Five Pieces," inspired by the Baroque dance suite, and Jacob's enchanting divertissement with its gentle melancholy, the triumphant English dance, a lyrical lament reminiscent of a smoky jazz ballad, chromatic scales, and forward-moving, humorous rhythms. He treated the recorder as a "completely normal instrument," Jacob commented in 1957, "not at all like a museum piece" from the Baroque period.

Peter Holtslag, recorder
Ruysdael Kwartet:
Joris van Rijn, violin
Emi Ohi Resnick, violin
Gijs Kramers, viola
Michael Müller, cello

Tracklist:
01. Songs of War & Peace: I. Pastorale - Schnitter Tod
02. Songs of War & Peace: II. Battaglia
03. Songs of War & Peace: III. Fantasia super 'Dunkle Wolke'
04. Songs of War & Peace: IV. Scherzo - Grimmig Tod und Heilig Kind
05. Songs of War & Peace: V. Elegia


Thanks to the Original customer!