An instrumental very diverse program was that Piknik Concert in Flagey, "Celebrating Wilfried Westerlinck": a real string quartet, two pianists playing four hands and the clarinet of none other than Benjamin Dieltjens. All this in that well-filled Studio 1, the chamber music hall where Westerlinck did so many recordings during his BRT/VRT career. For that reason alone it was for him, eighty years old!
Such a striking tribute. Wilfried Westerlinck: "Flagey has been almost my entire professional life. I started here in 1968 until the building closed to the public. But the VRT still used Studio 4 for recordings of the broadcast orchestra and choir, and Studio 1 for chamber music. And that for a few more years until the whole thing was sold. Then came that magnificent renovation. I am actually very grateful to Flagey as an institution that they have not only brought such a monument, such an incredibly beautiful building, back up to date architecturally, but also in terms of the studios, the sound, the facilities and everything, and have made it into a vibrant, lively Flagey."
The concert began with an early work of his, from 1985 "Preludio per una danza antico." It is both a fragile and hard four-hand work that settled frailly and softly in an impressionistic atmosphere. Then came a creation of a string quartet from 2011, "Melopee. Hommage aan Paul van Ostaijen". Those melancholic opening sentences of the poet that inspired the composer stand on the Ghent poetry route along the Gras- and Korenlei: "Under the moon the long river slides". Three strings slowly move along with that silent water and that man in the canoe to the sea, supported by an equally soft plucking of a pizzicato cello. All members of the Antwerp Symphony Orchestra. Melopee means "rhythmic song".
When the musicians saw Westerlinck's text annotations on the score, they themselves suggested making it a real spoken song. And so it happened: Benjamin Dieltjens movingly recites the well-known poem based on those annotations. Thus the whole musical company slowly glided to the sea as a metaphor for life and death. After that rather sad melody and that recitative came a much more rhythmic Saltimbanco for string quartet. And that sounds wonderfully in this Flagey sound house. He never composed here, he did that at home. Westerlinck: "Most of it I actually started writing from the year 2000, when I 'had to' leave the VRT at 55. The broadcasting company went different ways…. But I started writing even more. My early works were dodecaphonic and serial, then tonality gradually crept back in, more lyricism and in the latest works I feel myself becoming more romantic. Isn't that normal as you get older? No more 'front runner' behavior…". You hear that in that Gisekin Rapsodie for four-hand piano, again inspired by poetry by Jo Gisekin this time. Dark low and bright high begins this work by the Izumi piano duo. It gradually crescendos and is allowed to resonate so long and so beautifully at the end.
And then clarinetist Benjamin Dieltjens gets to shine virtuosically on his instrument once more. Westerlinck wrote nine "Landscapes", each time for different ensembles. Number VII is for clarinet and string quartet. All five of them play that dialoguing score joyfully and cheerfully, each time with powerful and soft clarinet solos until they together lay down all the sounds perfectly and serenely. Entirely in the idiom that characterizes Westerlinck: "I write music that can engage people, that brings them something they can follow, understand, I use things that are very normal in music history so far, repetition, rhythmic certainty and rhythmic motives, recognizable chords that do not clash with each other, with music I want to tell a story." And many have already enjoyed that, also this time in his Studio 1, in his Flagey.
