Holland Festival Proms: Grand Subphonia

Save the Bassoon

Save the Bassoon will have its roaring finale this June. The campaign was launched during the 2015 Holland Festival to save the bassoon from decline and stimulate children to pick up a classical instrument. Thanks to all our partners, the initiative has been a great success throughout the country.

World-class bassoonists Pascal Gallois and Bram van Sambeek will give concerts at this year’s festival. Merlijn Twaalfhoven will write a new composition for more than one hundred bassoonists of all abilities, and everyone is invited to join in. There will also be a number of ancillary activities. You can take part in our bassoon course for absolute beginners and there’s a masterclass by Pascal Gallois for bassoon students. After all the media attention at the launch of Save the Bassoon last year, this will be a fitting finale to a successful campaign.

Grand Subphonia for the biggest band of bassoons

During this year's Holland Festival Proms, the Save the Bassoon campaign is getting its fitting finale. Led by the campaign's ambassador Bram van Sambeek, more than one hundred bassoonists will perform Grand Subphonia by Merlijn Twaalfhoven (1976). The event fits in seamlessly with Twaalfhoven's ambition to connect people through music at special locations. His score is a passionate ode to the bassoon's often underrated range of sound. Twaalfhoven: 'We hope it will be an overwhelming, unforgettable and unmissable experience, for the musicians as well as for the audience. We're going to break down the usual configuration that exists in the concert hall, with musicians up on the stage and the audience in the stands or on the balconies. Some of the musicians will play in the stalls, enveloping the audience in sound. The music itself is full of contrast, ranging from contemporary phrases to mottoes from Mozart, demonstrating the bassoon's special and varied range of sound.’ Bassoon players of every level can sign up to perform in the world premiere of this concert. Absolute beginners who want to participate can register for the beginners introduction Crash Course Bassoon offered by the festival on June 5th.

The set-up for Twaalfhoven's bassoon project is similar to his Symfonie voor iedereen (Symphony for everyone) from 2007, in which professional musicians, among them members of the Netherlands Philharmonic Orchestra, performed together with amateur musicians and school children. Twaalfhoven: 'To me as a composer, the most important difference is that then I had the availability of a full orchestra's palette, whereas now I need to produce the full range of sound and contrast from one single instrument. What I like about both projects is that non-professional or inexperienced players can make a valuable contribution to the piece. The fun thing about children is that they are often better at improvising, and much more inventive with unorthodox techniques than experienced adults.'

Exactly how the piece is going to sound, is yet largely unclear to Twaalfhoven. 'The sketches are ready and the musicians will need to study their parts in time. Nevertheless, a part of the final result will only be determined in the last week, when we can introduce improvisational elements and explore the possibilities of the space. Together we'll see what works best and make this into an unforgettable event for the performers as well as the public.'