Veronique De Raedemaeker is a young violinist, this year one of the twenty-somethings at Radio Klara. A name that has been appearing more frequently in recent years as a promising young talent. She has already won quite a few prizes and last year passed the Konzertexamen at Musikhochschule Koln with Mikhail Ovrutsky with summa con laude. Incidentally, not only for violin, but also for the interpretation of Neue Musik.
Together with harpist Mathilde Wauters, who has also made a name for herself in recent years, she performed a recital in the Onze-Lieve-Vrouwekerk in Mariakerke, under the auspices of Davidsfonds Mariakerke and SWUK. On the programme: French composers from the belle époque: Debussy, Ravel, Jean Cras, Fauré, together with Chopin, Saint-Saëns and some lesser-known names.
SWUK stands for social works of performing artists in Flanders. Since 2010 they have launched quite a lot of young talent. You can almost take that literally. Some of them, such as clarinettist Annelien Van Wauwe and harpist Anneleen Lenaerts, are making an international career.
Outsider
17 March, Saint Patricks Day, national holiday of Ireland. It could also be the Day of the Harp. Violin and harp, of course, is less frequent than violin and piano, but has its own intimate charm. The harp is somewhat of an outsider in classical music. You see them sometimes in the orchestra. Harp concertos are not often performed. The plucking and tinkling on the harp has something fairy-tale-like about it. That a harp as an instrument is taken less seriously than a violin or piano is overstating it, but there is something to it. The Elisabeth competition for harp, few would be able to imagine it. Mathilde Wauters has broken this image today.
Before she puts the violin under her chin, the lovely smile of Veronique De Raedemaeker strikes you. A radiant appearance that captivates the audience even before she begins to play. A self-assured smile that disappears and gives way to deep seriousness at the first notes. The timbre of her violin, built by German violin maker Stefan-Peter Greiner in 2005, immediately stands out. A grainy tone, a special sound with relief in it. A powerful violin tone with which she creates beautiful phrases, sometimes lyrical, sometimes cheerful, sometimes agitated.
Arrow
They play a suite and duo by Jean Cras, according to the programme. After the piece, Mathilde Wauters takes the floor: we have fooled you, because this was the Fantaisie for violin and harp by Camille Saint-Saëns, which was the last piece in the booklet. Yet it sounded un-Saint-Saënesque, impressionistic dreamy as we are not used to from him. They continue with transcriptions of songs by Debussy and variations by Chopin. Then Veronique takes the floor for a moment to announce the famous Pavane pour une enfante défunte by Ravel. They dedicate it to all children who are dying of hunger and war in the world today. After Gabriel Fauré's Après un rève, I am completely drawn into the dreams of the belle époque, moved and enraptured by the beautiful playing and the bewitching charm of this exceptional violinist. I will not be the only man in the audience who felt her bow as an arrow in the heart.
Whale
It is especially in these serene, lyrical pieces that she plays so beautifully, I suspect. This is evident once more in the even more familiar piece after the interval: Spiegel im Spiegel by Arvo Pärt. She plays this with an almost supernatural control and incantation. Spine-tingling, without relying too much on a senza vibrato effect. The piece lasts ten long, hyperserene, drawn-out minutes. We are sitting on an ice floe, in the distance we see a few polar bears, nearby a whale surfaces. When the last notes have faded, it is deathly quiet. We are pinned down by so much serenity, control, spine-tingling beauty.
Mathilde then plays a work by Marcel Tournier for harp solo. Fascinating how she virtuously and gracefully plucks and strokes the strings, operates the pedals with her feet like an organist always busy with his feet. She convinces me of the richness and refinement of harp playing. If I felt an arrow in my heart with Veronique, the harpist Mathilde Wauters touches me equally, but in a completely different way. The harp is also a much heavier instrument. For a moment I feel like the whale struck by her harpoon.
Angel
With the last work we are back out to sea, because Jean Cras was not only a composer but also an admiral in the French navy. You always hear the waves and the sea wind in his work. The waves that have carried us with Veronique and Mathilde for well over an hour on this adventurous journey through the belle époque.
I wonder what it would be like to hear them perform works from another period, I think to myself, and after the concert I buy a cd on which Veronique De Raedemaeker plays Ysaÿe and Prokofiev. The cd MALINCONIA was praised as Klara's Choice in 2020. Very nicely played, but in the Prokofiev I miss some fire. The Allegro brusco from Prokofiev's first sonata, for example, you really have to go at it like the devil. That is when I would hear and see in my mind a violinist like Patricia Kopatchinskaya. That is perhaps less the repertoire for an angel like Veronique De Raedemaeker.
- WHAT: Duets for violin and harp
- WHO: Violinist Veronique De Raedemaeker and harpist Mathilde Wauters
- ORGANIZATION: Davidsfonds and SWUK
- WHERE & WHEN: 17 March 2024, Onze-Lieve-Vrouwekerk in Mariakerke
- PHOTOS: © Pieter Van Haute
