MiM quiz – Expert level / Education

The conductor Reinbert de Leeuw, together with the Dutch ensembles Schönberg Ensemble and Asko Ensemble (now combined into one Asko/Schönberg Ensemble) performed and premiered many of Louis Andriessen’s works.

Maurizio Pollini is a brilliant interpreter of Pierre Boulez’s piano sonatas, especially No. 2, which he believes is a milestone in the repertoire for the instrument on a par with Beethoven’s sonatas.

Gidon Kremer is a great advocate of Arvo Pärt’s music – at his request the composer wrote Tabula Rasa; Kremer was also the first performer of Fratres in the version for violin and piano.

Les Percussions de Strasbourg premiered Kazimierz Serocki’s percussion sextet Continuum.

Kazimierz Serocki wrote music to Jerzy Hoffman’s Oscar-nominated film The Deluge.

In 1976, at the Wagner festival in Bayreuth, Pierre Boulez conducted Der Ring des Nibelungen in a production directed by Patrice Chéreau – to this day considered to be one of the best stagings of Wagner’s cycle.

The most popular and exemplary recordings of Arvo Pärt’s music have been issued by the ECM label headed by Manfred Eicher.

Peter Greenaway worked with Louis Andriessen on several musical-film and musical-stage projects (M is for Man, Music, Mozart; Rosa, Writing to Vermeer).

Arvo Pärt studied composition in Tallinn with e.g. Veljo Tormis, a composer known primarily for his choral compositions.

The eminent Italian composer Luciano Berio was young Louis Andriessen’s composition professor in 1962–1964.

In the same period, also in Paris, Olivier Messiaen conducted his famous analysis class – his broad horizons, unconventional interests and openness attracted many composers, including Pierre Boulez, who several years later became leading figures of the European avant-garde.

Nadia Boulanger (1887–1979) was a teacher of many outstanding composers, including Kazimierz Serocki, who in 1947–1948 explored the secrets of composing under her guidance thanks to a scholarship he had been granted.