Orkest de Volharding is one of the longest established European new music ensembles, created in 1972 by composers Louis Andriessen and Willem Breuker to perform one work, Andriessen's piece De Volharding. Its sister ensemble, Hoketus, has long fallen by the wayside, but Orkest de Volharding (literally the Perseverance Orchestra) presses on in a prodigious outpouring of concerts and recordings. They remain little known in the United States, despite having recorded works of Andriessen, Julia Wolfe, and Michael Torke for major ...
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Orkest de Volharding is one of the longest established European new music ensembles, created in 1972 by composers Louis Andriessen and Willem Breuker to perform one work, Andriessen's piece De Volharding. Its sister ensemble, Hoketus, has long fallen by the wayside, but Orkest de Volharding (literally the Perseverance Orchestra) presses on in a prodigious outpouring of concerts and recordings. They remain little known in the United States, despite having recorded works of Andriessen, Julia Wolfe, and Michael Torke for major labels distributed in America. This might change with Mode Records' excellent two-disc set The Minimalists, which features Orkest de Volharding's take on some of the major figures in minimalism -- Steve Reich, Terry Riley, and John Adams -- along with others who sometimes go along with the ride -- composer and critic Kyle Gann, Bang on a Can co-founder David Lang, and Orkest de Volharding's own co-founder Louis Andriessen.Before proceeding, it should be said that all of the...
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