Mystic world premiere

For Orewoet, commissioned by the Concertgebouw Orchestra, Rob Zuidam delved into the life and work of the medieval mystic Hadewijch. He’d already composed works about remarkable women from history, such as Patricia Hearst (whose allegiance shifted to her kidnappers), Joanna the Mad (who travelled around with her husband’s corpse for years) and Suster Bertken (a nun who had herself bricked into her cell).

Hadewijch wrote about her encounters with God in unabashedly erotic terms. The word ‘orewoet’ expressed ‘a raging longing for love’, a burning desire for union with God, which she described in ecstatic, sensual poetry.

‘I understand the desire to be subsumed in something that’s greater than yourself’, Zuidam tells us in our monthly magazine Preludium. ‘It’s essentially what religion is all about. When I open up to it, it gives me exciting musical ideas and images. I use sound to make my images into a painting.’

Zuidam knows the orchestra well, calling them ‘the best band in town’ in interviews. The orchestra has played several of his instrumental pieces before, Trance Figuration, Trance Position and Trance Dance, and in 2010, the commissioned work Adam-Interludes. ‘The sonority, the warmth of their sound, is the orchestra’s strong point – a prime example of things that musical notation can’t capture.’ Still, this sound was strongly in his mind while he was working on Orewoet. ‘I try to notate this sound in my own way.’

Katrien Baerts has worked with Zuidam before. She can even thank the composer for a defining lift in her career. ‘Shortly after I graduated in 2010, I was a last-minute substitute in his opera Suster Bertken, which was performed in the NTR Saturday Matinee,’ says the Flemish soprano. ‘The response was luckily very good, and since then I’ve often sung Rob’s works. He’s even written some especially for me. I’m curious how it’s all going to come together in his new work Orewoet.’

Zuidam has nothing but praise for Baerts. ‘I first heard her at the auditions for [his opera] Rage d’amours. She threw herself completely into it, and it was simply brilliant. From that moment on, she was my favourite. […] I also find her really brave; she really helped me out when I was putting together Suster Bertken. Another singer had withdrawn, and less than a month before the premiere, because she still found it a bit too difficult. Katrien really saved the day.’

Read the full interviews (in Dutch) with Rob Zuidam and Katrien Baerts in the April issue of Preludium or on preludium.nl.