Behind the scenes
"Then let's take a look behind the scenes, John.” From the elevator, John Hawinkels, together with an orchestra inspector, enters a room with instruments and video recording equipment. Hawinkels is one of the four Friends of philharmonie zuidnederland who are followed in the L1 television program The People's Salon. In the Grote Zaal of Muziekgebouw Eindhoven they listen alone to an entire symphony orchestra, which plays especially for them. The program includes a work of which they have special memories: Air by Bach, Shéhérazade by Rimsky-Korsakov and the Second Piano Concerto by Rachmaninov and Chopin.
The L1 series fits in with other television programs that show a glimpse behind the scenes of classical music. The final of the Maestro program attracted more than two million viewers who saw how rapper Sor beat actress and singer Simone Kleinsma. Their efforts – and those of the other candidates – to learn how to conduct made it clear that the work of a conductor is much more than beat the beat. In De Negende van Tijl we followed Tijl Beckand in his ambition to conduct Beethoven's last symphony.
The program that L1 made with philharmonie zuidnederland offers a different view behind the scenes. Instead of the conductor and the musicians, it is all about the listener. What does classical music mean in his or her life? We see John Hawinkels listening intently to Air, complex music that he tries to unravel, and which completely absorbs him. Peter van Heijst tells how he is working on a book about his father and wonders how they would have listened to Rachmaninov together. As a little girl, Solange Bartelet heard Chopin for the first time, played by Arthur Rubinstein in Theater Heerlen. Since then, she can no longer imagine her life without classical music. After 'his' performance, Ronald Rijnen stands up to applaud, alone, and says: 'Who am I that they are doing all this for me?'
The idea for The People's Salon originated with Imogen Eve, musician-researcher at the MCICM, in preparation for one of the experimental concerts that the center was developing with the orchestra. The fact that the idea has now been translated into a television format shows the value of research. But what is especially moving in the series of portraits of listeners is to see and hear how classical music lives not only during the performance on stage, but also in people's memories and stories.
The four episodes of The People's Salon can be seen at:
www.philharmoniezuidnederland.nl/nieuws
Peter Peters, director MCICM
