An instrumentally very diverse program was that Piknik Concert in Flagey, "Celebrating Wilfried Westerlinck": a genuine string quartet, two pianists playing four hands and the clarinet of none other than Benjamin Dieltjens. All of 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 a moving tribute for him, an eighty-year-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 continued for a few more years until it was all sold. Then came that magnificent renovation. I am actually very grateful to Flagey as an institution that they have not only restored such a monument, such an incredibly beautiful building, architecturally, but also in terms of the studios, the sound, the furnishings and everything, made it so up to date and created 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 settles delicately and softly in an impressionistic atmosphere. Then came a string quartet creation from 2011, "Melopee. Hommage aan Paul van Ostaijen". The melancholic opening lines of the poet that inspired the composer stand on the Ghent poetry route along the Gras- and Korenlei: "Under the moon the long river glides". Three string players slowly move along with that silent water and that man in the canoe to sea, supported by equally soft pizzicato from a 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 recites the well-known poem movingly on those annotations. So that entire musical ensemble slowly moved towards the sea as a metaphor about life and death. After that rather sad melody and that recitative followed a much more rhythmic Saltimbanco for string quartet. And that sounds wonderfully in this Flagey sound house. He never composed there, he did that at home. Westerlinck: "Most of it I actually started writing from the year 2000, when I had to leave the VRT 'by necessity' at 55. The broadcaster went other ways.... But I started writing even more. My early works were twelve-tone and serial, then tonality gradually creeps 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 Rhapsody for four-hand piano, again inspired by poetry by Jo Gisekin this time. Dark low and bright high the Izumi piano duo begins this work. It gradually crescendos and is allowed to resonate long and beautifully at the end.
And then clarinetist Benjamin Dieltjens gets to shine virtuously 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 cheerfully and merrily, with alternating powerful and soft clarinet solos until together they perfectly and serenely lay down all the sounds. Entirely in the idiom that characterizes Westerlinck: "I write music that can captivate people, brings them something they can follow, understand, I use things that are very normal in music history up to now, repetition, rhythmic certainty and rhythmic motifs, recognizable chords that don't clash with each other, with music I want to tell a story." And many have already enjoyed that, this time too in his Studio 1, in his Flagey.