Sunday's concert was a wonderful experience, and signaled the opening of the traditional hunting season in Belgium. The choice of works was interesting, and included the Hunting Cantata, another secular Cantata, and a lot of dramatic hunting horn ensemble playing by a group of red-coated players, the Royal Antwerp Hunting Horn Society. As you can see we are all enjoying a glass in the square after the concert (in my case, a Duvel).
This was a very interesting concert for me, as it was Bach's Lutheran music, to German texts, with hunting as a theme; these are all things that remind me very much of my late Grandfather, a German Lutheran hunter himself! Another interesting conection comes from our commune here in Brussels: Watermael-Boitsfort's coat of arms displays the hunting horn and the stag, symbolizing Saint-Hubertus himself, as a reflection of this area's history as an area historically rich in wildlife. I recently found a vintage poster advertising the commune, and on it you can see St. Hubertus and the coat of arms very clearly.
Lastly, with people talking about hunting season, I couldn't help but think about this.
But back to "serious", as opposed to Chuck Jones' comedic art... Performing this music in Rubens' own baroque Catholic church added a lot to the experience, and the orchestra was made up of many very accomplished baroque musicians. This was my first time performing with Paul Van Loey, an accomplished multi-instrumentalist, conductor and co-founder of the Flanders Recorder Quartet, but we are looking forward to working together again on three performances of Messiah next spring.Now it's time to practice for the Remembrance Day concert I'm preparing with Piers Maxim, and to refresh my memory on the Franck music for the 13th. That will come sooner than it seems, since Maggie and I will be exploring Vienna for the week of November 1st - 5th, so that's a week less preparation time. The Ned Rorem War Scenes are in particular a challenge to learn, as they are modern, chromatic and sometimes very angular, with much unaccompanied singing punctuated by interjections by the piano; not bumpity-bump music at all! Fortunately the other music on the programme (Dover Beach, Brahms Serious Songs, Faure and Handel etc.) is much better known to me, so for those pieces it's a matter of re-examination. One important exception will be the Brussels premiere of a Canadian piece: Eleanor Daley's setting of John McRae's In Flanders Fields.
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