Dutch Composers's video: Peter Schat - Polonaise Op 29

Peter Schat (1935-2003) Polonaise : for piano, Op. 29 (1981) Makon Austbo, piano dedicated to the father of the composer Program note (Dutch): Het werk werd geschreven tussen augustus 1980 en mei 1981, als een neerslag van de gebeurtenissen op de Lenin-werf in Gdansk, Polen: Allegro furioso e appassionato, en is een reflexie op de virtuoze pianostijl van Chopin. Ook de titel kan daarmee in verband gebracht worden. De tonaliteit is die van het vierde en twaalfde uur van de toonklok. De tonaliteit van een kwint en 2 grote tertsen, die met behulp van stuurreeksen voortdurend het hele chromatische gebied doorlopen. Het werk is opgedragen aan mijn vader, die mij de liefde voor het pianospel bijbracht, zijn leven en zijn gezin in het verzet tegen de nazi's riskeerde en 's avonds Chopin speelde. - PETER SCHAT Peter Schat was a Dutch composer and writer on music. He studied composition with van Baaren at the conservatories of Utrecht and The Hague (1952-1958), with Seiber in London (1959) and with Boulez in Basle (1960-1961). Between 1974 and 1983 he taught composition at the Royal Conservatory in The Hague. In 1967 he co-founded STEIM (Studio voor Elektro-Instrumentale Muziek). His awards include the Matthijs Vermeulenprize (1973, for To You) and the Joost van den Vondelprize of the Westfälische Wilhelmsuniversität of Münster (1990). Schat's training was as a serial composer. His first compositions, such as the Introductie en adagio in oude stijl (1954) and the Septet (1957), combine traditional forms, including sonata form, with dodecaphony. But his lessons with Boulez led him to a more radical, strict form of serial thought, and even before that he was regarded in the Netherlands as one of the leading members of the avant garde of his generation. In the fourth part of the Octet (1958), dedicated to van Baaren, it is the players who determine the order of its 12 segments, while in the final part there is occasion for individual improvisation. In Improvisations and Symphonies (1960) free performer invention becomes the central component. The work also reveals Schat's inclination towards the theatrical, with spatial movement prescribed in the form of performer-directed 'promenades'. Of his Boulez-influenced pieces, Entelechie I displays structures with fixed properties and less fixed 'commentaries' upon them in the form of retrospective and anticipatory 'shadows'; the work also involves complex textures in its accumulated heterophonies. However, as Schat subsequently became involved with socio-political issues, he came to associate the static qualities of this piece and its successor, Entelechie II, with what he saw as the immobility of western social institutions serving a cold war mentality; Boulez himself was described as a 'premature specialization', a biological concept relating to a species without a chance to develop. In 1969, Schat was one of the leading figures in another demonstration event -- the notorious 'notenkrakersactie' in which a group of activists disturbed a concert by the Concertgebouw Orchestra, demanding an open discussion of music policy. In the same year, alongside the composers Reinbert de Leeuw, Louis Andriessen, Jan van Vlijmen and Misha Mengelberg, and the writers Harry Mulisch and Hugo Claus, Schat was also involved in Reconstructie, a 'morality' theatre work, again a homage to 'Che' Guevara, about the conflict between imperialism and liberation. The symbolic central character is a US imperialist Don Giovanni, who seduces and rapes the ladies Bolivia and Cuba; his opponent is the Commendatore 'Che'.