aperture reviews

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."

  Download Trouw review (PDF, Dutch)
  Download NRC review (PDF, Dutch)