April 5, 2008 | The Radio Chamber Philharmonic Orchestra – under the baton of Thierry Fischer – successfully performed Aperture on March 29 in the Amsterdam Concertgebouw.

In the Dutch newspaper Trouw, Peter van der Lint praised the 'daring music' of Aperture: "With Fiumara, the light shines blazing and extreme. Aperture is a piece without compromise, [...] that doesn't try to please the listener. Wagner's 'unendliche Melodie' is here translated as 'unendliche Klang': a slowly thinning string sound from high to low, mixed with 'unheimische' hits by two percussionists and a pianist. Towards the end, the frequencies of the low tones of the Maarschalkerweerd organ clash into each other more and more. It seems as if nothing happens, but under the skin it tosses and turns. As if a budle of light in an empty house searches mercilessly for the dark past of its earlier inhabitants."

In NRC Handelsblad, Jochem Valkenburg also wrote a positive review of what he calls 'a logical extension of Fiumara's existing oeuvre': "It breathes a serene atmosphere, is straightforward and process-based, and it intelligently uses well-tried canon techniques. [...] The work starts with a Ligeti-like sound image, as shrill strings descend gradually in different tempos. But in spite of a warm vibrato, Fiumara keeps the texture strikingly bare and without compromise. One hears the process, nothing more – except maybe in the slightly dramatized ending, where all the voices arrive at their lowest point."

March 28, 2008 | On March 29, Thierry Fischer and the Radio Chamber Philharmonic Orchestra perform the world premiere of Aperture (2008) for string orchestra in the acclaimed ZaterdagMatinee series in the Amsterdam Concertgebouw. Aperture is a homage to the American visual artist James Turrell, the Light and Space artist who takes light itself and makes it his material. There is no object in his art, no image, and no point of focus.

Aperture — a homage not in light, but in sound slowly inhabiting the space – was written for the Dutch Radio Chamber Philharmonic Orchestra and conductor Thierry Fischer. It was commissioned by the ZaterdagMatinee series and the Nederlands Fonds voor de Podiumkunsten+. The work is dedicated to Kees Vlaardingerbroek, artistic director of the ZaterdagMatinee series.

March 9, 2008 | Dutch pianist Nora Mulder (performing in the pouring rain on this photo) will be premiering À.X. for piano solo in the Muziekenhuis in Nijmegen, on May 14. À.X. (a hommage to Iannis Xenakis) is closely related to Fern (2006) and Kranz (2005). Dating back to 2005, it was the first sketch in a series of arborescences, which was waiting for a performer to be finished in this form.

In À.X. the sonic equivalent of the Lindenmayer axiom – a fractal-like model of the growth of trees and branches – is presented unfiltered, polyphonic and relentless in the first part. À.X. is modelled after piano pieces by Yannis Xenakis – virtuoso repertoire that Mulder performs so powerfully and elegantly.

The sonic process of growing branches and diverging polyphony is repeated as a chorale in the second part (titled Phyllotaxis, the arrangement of the leaves on the stem of a plant). In Phyllotaxis, a cloud of singing cicadas inhabits the instrument; referring to (in Xenakis' words): "The collision of hail or rain with hard surfaces, or the song of cicadas in a summer field. These sonic events are made out of thousands of isolated sounds; this multitude of sounds, seen as a totality, is a new sonic event."