Cees Nieuwenhuizen

Impressive World Premiere of Beethoven's Fantasia Sonata in D for piano by Martin Oei (reconstruction Cees Nieuwenhuizen)

Background information and docs on the Fantasia Sonata

Press Release - Communiqué de Presse - Pressemitteilung - Persbericht

Oct 21, 2012. Martin Oei gave a great world premiere concert in the Concertgebouw Amsterdam in a sold out concert hall. The reconstruction of the Beethoven Fantasia Sonata was very well received by the audience. 

 

Cees Nieuwenhuizen opens the concert

Martin Oei concentrating at the beginning of the concert

Cees Nieuwenhuizen explained the history of the Fantasia Sonata in D. Nieuwenhuizen showed the original Beethoven sketches from the Kafka Sketbooks and explained how he reconstructed the work. Nieuwenhuizen: "Of course I had to compose-in, as I call it, some missing things, but this piece is almost entirely Beethoven"

Picture: Martin Oei, Daniel Wayenberg and Cees Nieuwenhuizen

At the end of the concert famous pianist Daniel Wayenberg (born 1929 in Paris) who attended the concert gave an encore (Rachmaninov quatre mains) with 'his young friend' Martin Oei. Wayenberg received the first copy of the reconstruction in a beautiful hard cover edition. Wayenberg: "The Beethoven Fantasia Sonata in D from 1792 was well reconstructed by Cees Nieuwenhuizen. It is a great work that deserves to be promoted and performed on stage."

 

First CD recording Beethoven Fantasia Sonata in D

Zefir records issued a recording of the Fantasia Sonata in D Deest 45, with Martin Oei, Piano.

 

Order:

http://www.zefirrecords.nl/album/e3d731623b8005226f3/martin-oei_ludwig-van-beethoven-fantasia-sonata.html

Beethoven ringtones:

Ringtone 1, download mp3 (slow) or Ringtone 2, download mp3 (fast)

The ringtones are both excerpts from the 3rd part of the Fantasy Sonata. The slow ringtone starts from bar 660 (the moment when the 2nd theme begins, a wonderful theme in a-flat major, the key of love, a moment of beauty in any case), and ends at measure 733. The other ringtone begins at bar 885 and ends at measure 927.  It begins pianissimo and then there is build-up to fortissimo with heavy accents and it contains very exciting moments.

Interview with Cees Nieuwenhuizen on Fantasia Sonata (in Dutch)

 

2011, February 10th. Beethoven Project Trio Concert Announcement, CD issue of Piano trio nr. 15 in Es, Opus 63, Hess 47 (reconstruction)

George Lepauw, the pianist of the Beethoven Project Trio (with Sang Mee Lee, violin and Wendy Warner, cello) announces the first concert of the group's first complete Beethoven Piano Trio cycle, in five concerts beginning Wednesday February 10th, 2010 at the PianoForte Salon in the historic Fine Arts Building, 410 S. Michigan Avenue, Chicago. Visit www.BeethovenProjectTrio.com or Wiki for more info.

 

Download back cover

Recording Beethoven Piano Trio nr. 15 in Es, Opus 63, Osiris Trio

Ludwig van Beethoven
Piano Trio in E flat Major Opus 63
(world premiere)

Reconstruction: Cees Nieuwenhuizen and Jos van der Zanden

Osiris Trio

Ellen Corver- piano

Peter Brunt-violin

Larissa Groeneveld-cello

recording location: De Doelen, Rotterdam, The Netherlands
recording dates: February and June 2003
Raptus Records 303.68.34

Piano Trio in C minor, Opus 1 No. 3

Amherst College,Amherst MA,
USA,Febr. 1,2003 (live)
total time: 53

listen to the track :
L.v.Beethoven  Trio in Es op.1 no.1 - Scherzo /
Allegro 

2008, February 12. Bart Schneemann on Beethoven's lost Oboe Concerto Hess12 (reconstruction: Cees Nieuwenhuizen, Jos van der Zanden)

Oboe concerto, Hess 12

Channel classics 21404 Bart Schneemann, Ludwig August Lebrun, Beethoven, Oboe Concertos

 

 

 

2006, April 21st. Beethoven/Nieuwenhuizen Violin concerto in C, WoO5 Hess10

When Beethoven was 20 years old he wrote 259 bars for a violin concerto. Composer Cees Nieuwenhuizen wrote with this material the reconstruction of the 1th movement of this violin concerto in C major.

De Doelen Rotterdam, Nederlands Kamerorkest, Conductor: Gordan Nicolic, violin

 

2003, March 15. Interview: Dutch musician Jos Van der Zanden discusses the reconstruction of a lost Beethoven oboe concerto

 

picture: CD : Raptus 302.02.01

Alexei Ogrintchouk (hobo)

Conrad van Alphen (dirigent)

Rotterdams Kamerorkest

 

 

 

National Public Radio Weekend Edition

Listen this interview

20030315_wesat_09

SUSAN STAMBERG, host:

And now for the very first time in American broadcasting, music composed by Ludwig van Beethoven in 1792, then lost to the ages and recorded for the first time ever this month.

(Soundbite of music)

STAMBERG: A section from seven minutes of a Beethoven oboe concerto, performed and recorded by the Rotterdam Chamber Orchestra, the score reconstructed by musicologist Jos Van der Zanden. He joins us from the studios of Radio Netherlands.

Hello.

Mr. JOS VAN DER ZANDEN: Good morning.

STAMBERG: I think this is very exciting. It's like finding a Rembrandt in your attic. Bits and pieces of the oboe concerto were found over the years. What did you have to do for us to be able to hear it?

Mr. VAN DER ZANDEN: Well, the sketches have survived only in a skeletal form so only the melodic phrases of the piece, not the harmonies, not the orchestration, not the accompaniment. And that was our task.

STAMBERG: And you tried, I bet, to make it accurate to its day. I mean, he wrote this in 1792. So you had to reconstruct it for an 18th century orchestra.

Mr. VAN DER ZANDEN: Yeah, that's true. Beethoven was very young when he composed this piece. He was in his early 20s. He was still living in Bonn, his birthplace, and shortly afterwards he moved to Vienna to take lessons from Haydn. He took this concerto, which was finished. It was a three-part concerto. He took it with him to Vienna. And when he was in Vienna under Haydn, he decided to rework it, and make a new slow movement, so it's a piece of the very young Beethoven, who is not the composer of the major masterpieces we now all admire, it's a composer which still takes lessons and has to get acquainted with things you have to learn at school.

STAMBERG: Harmony, theory, yeah.

Mr. VAN DER ZANDEN: Counterpoint, those kinds of things.

STAMBERG: Let's listen again and see if we think it sounds like the work of a student.

(Soundbite of music)

STAMBERG: You know, listening to that oboe, it's such a beleaguered instrument. It is one of the earliest woodwinds in the orchestra and people make fun of it all the time. In fact...

Mr. VAN DER ZANDEN: Yeah.

STAMBERG: ...they make jokes. Let me tell you one. What's the difference between an oboe and an onion.

Mr. VAN DER ZANDEN: I wouldn't know.

STAMBERG: When you chop up an onion, you cry.

Mr. VAN DER ZANDEN: Yes, that's very nice. Yeah.

STAMBERG: But it's very mean. Now...

Mr. VAN DER ZANDEN: Yeah. Yes, of course.

STAMBERG: ...did Beethoven have any particular affection for the oboe?

Mr. VAN DER ZANDEN: Well, not really. He never tried his hand at an oboe concerto later because in the 18th century there were written hundreds of these concertos. Every composer wrote a number of them. But after about 1800, it was not as popular as before. I don't know for what reason. It has to do with virtuosos touring around Europe or something. But it was the end of an era.

STAMBERG: Now you and a partner have put together this second movement of Beethoven's oboe concerto. Where are the first and the third movements?

Mr. VAN DER ZANDEN: They vanished. The concerto was at some time complete. After Beethoven died, the concerto was seen at publishing house, Diabelli, in Vienna, in the 1840s, and after that, it suddenly vanished. Nobody knows what happened with it. And the only thing that is left now are these sketch for the slow movement.

(Soundbite of music)

STAMBERG: I find this such a charming sound, a little bashful maybe. Do you hear any traces of what will become Beethoven, the great composer of the symphony?

Mr. VAN DER ZANDEN: Well, just the glimpses. It's a rather reflective, quiet music, very fragile music, and there are some pieces of the late Beethoven that sounds similar, but the overall impression is that this rather Mozartian, the way Mozart and Haydn composed.

STAMBERG: Can you guide our ear to a part of--in these seven minutes where you hear what will become Beethoven with a capital `B'?

Mr. VAN DER ZANDEN: Well, the little credenza at the end of the piece is very expressive, and you don't know what will come in these notes. It's always a surprise, and that's exactly what Beethoven in his later works did.

(Soundbite of music)

STAMBERG: From the ending of a long-lost section of an oboe concerto, written by Ludwig van Beethoven when he was just 22, reconstructed by musicologist Jos Van Der Zanden and Cees Nieuwenhuizen, the oboist Alexei Ogringchowk.

(Soundbite of music)

STAMBERG: Our thanks to Jos Van Der Zanden who spoke to us from the studios of Radio Netherlands.

This is WEEKEND EDITION from NPR News. Mr. Simon will be back next Saturday. I'm Susan Stamberg.

1988. Barry Cooper speaks for Beethoven 10th Symphony

Ludwig van Beethoven's symphony No. 10 in E flat major is a hypothetical work, assembled by Barry Cooper from Beethoven's fragmentary sketches. This title is controversial since it cannot be proved that all the sketches assembled were meant for the same piece (source: wikipedia, Symphony No. 10 (Beethoven/Cooper)).

 

 Beethoven's Tenth Symphony & Cooper 

Before Beethoven had completed his Ninth Symphony in 1824, he had already started jotting down ideas for a Tenth (a similar overlap had occurred in his Fifth and Sixth symphonies). He worked on this new symphony sporadically from 1822 onwards, with the latest known sketches dating from October 1825; but at the time of his death in March 1827 only the first movement had been worked on in any detail. His friend Karl Holz later reported having heard him play it on the piano and gave a brief description: a gentle introduction in E-flat major followed by a powerful Allegro in C minor. But even this movement was evidently far from being completely written down and there are no clear indications of what was to follow in later movements.

Like most of Beethoven't sketches for other works, those for the Tenth symphony are scattered in several different sketch manuscripts (four main ones plus a number of subsidiary ones have so far been identified). As usual, they are unlabeled and almost illegible to anyone not well acquainted with Beethoven's idiosyncratic handwriting. Consequently, it was not until the 1980s that any of them were identified with any certainty. In the meantime, rumors about the Tenth Symphony, started mainly by Holz and Anton Schindler, had fueled speculation that there might be a complete manuscript hidden away somewhere or alternatively that the symphony had never been begun and that the rumors were without foundation. Now, however, we are a little clearer and more than 50 sketches are known, although many questions remain unanswered and it is possible that more sketches may yet be discovered. All the sketches are very fragmentary, with none containing more than about 30 bars of continuous music; but to someone familiar with Beethoven's normal sketching methods they do give a clear idea of the sort of movement he had in mind. Moreover, they contain some very good material. It therefore seems very well worthwhile to try and make them available for performances by filling them out into a performing version, rather than leaving them in archives where they can be of use only to a few specialists. After all, the sketches represent sound rather than shapes on paper, and the cannot be fully assessed until they have been heard--and preferably heard in an appropriate orchestral setting. The present writer had already studied Beethoven's sketches for numerous other works, in connection with a book he was writing (Beethoven and the Creative Process, to be published by Oxford University Press), and therefore felt he was in a better position than most scholars to attempt a completion of the first movement, even though the task at first seemed impossibly daunting. Altogether there are around 250 bars of sketches for the first movement. Some duplicate or contradict each other, leaving less than 200 usable; but many of these can be used more than once, by means of repetitions and reprises such as occur in all of Beethoven's symphonies (for example, a theme sketched for the exposition will recur in the recapitulation). The sketches thereby provide us with well over 300 bars, while the remaining 200 bars or so (out of 531) have had to be adapted from the same basic themes by various means (e.g. by transposition and sequence) and developed in the way Beethoven normally did. Thus, all the basic thematic material is Beethoven's; but appropriate harmony has had to be added in places where it is missing, the movement has had to be orchestrated in Beethoven's style (with the aid of only a few clues in the sketches), and linking passages based on Beethoven's themes have been inserted where necessary.

The result is obviously not exactly what Beethoven would have written, and in certain places in particular he would probably have been more imaginative. It also sounds more typical of middle period than late Beethoven, although this may be due to the close connections with the early piano sonatos. Nevertheless, it does provide at least a rough impression of the movement he had in mind at the time of the sketches and is certainly far closer to Beethoven's Tenth symphony than anything previously heard. It is therefore likely to be found extrememly interesting by anyone wanting to know what he planned for the symphony that was to have followed the Ninth; moreover it can also be appreciated as a piece of music, in a way that the fragmentary sketches on their own could never be.

Written by Barry Cooper