More than one kind of old friend

Lunch yesterday with my friends Ninja and Charlie from the univ. of Amsterdam musicology program was super fun! We all agreed that we were totally unchanged! :-)

Charlie, Sara, Ninja

 There was plenty of reminiscing about the old days, and filling in the goings-on of the last 12 years!

We sat at a cafe called 'Villa Zeezicht' which is located right next to the building where the musicology department used to be housed. I do not include a photo, because no-one wants to look at the P.C. Hoofthuis! It's rather an eyesore...

After we said good-bye I walked towards the Oude Kerk to pay my respects to Sweelinck. I didn't end up going in (I would have had to pay an entry fee for a photo exhibit I didn't want to see), but I did hear some organ music coming from the canal...

De Muziekboot

Yes, it's a man with a trumpet in a boat outfitted with a 'player organ' (instead of a player piano). He turned the wheel with one hand, causing the organ to play, and played the trumpet with the other. I guess the rudder of the boat was linked to the wheel of the organ. He did just keep going around in circles! It  had a rather nice organ sound!

Then it was back to Haarlem! Jim and I played on our computers in our charming little house:

Vermeer would have totally dug the lighting of that picture!

Then we ate an early dinner at Novecento, a very fun Italian place! Jim had a mozzarella and tomato salad with basil leaves and then a delicious vegetarian lasagna, and I had a mixed salad with a wonderful seafood stew in an incredibly creamy sauce. Heerlijk!

Then it was off to an organ concert! I had totally misread the website, and so I thought we'd be hearing the famous Christian Müller organ in St. Bavo's. But, we ended up at the Philharmonie, listening to a... (wait for it)... Cavaillé-Coll! 

Let me give you what I hope is a suitable analogy. Imagine that you have primed yourself to enjoy a delicious German meal. You're sitting there at the table, rubbing your hands together in anticipation of eating schnitzel, potatoes, sauerkraut, some of that delectable German bread, and of course the finest beer you can imagine. 


Then the waiter comes and sets the following before you: fish daintily poached in white wine sauce, accompanied by lightly steamed asparagus and baguette, with a bottle of Viognier. Absolutely delicious, but not what one was expecting!


And so it was with last night's organ concert. A program of French Romantic organ music, played on an instrument of the type that launched the whole French Symphonic organ tradition. We heard Guilmant, Alain, Vierne, Lefebure-Wely, Franck and Lemmens, all performed by Jos van der Kooy. 


In a way it was absolutely the right music to hear after my nostalgic lunch with my old friends, because the French Romantic organ school was the be-all, end-all musically for me before I discovered Buxtehude. A day without Vierne, Widor, Langlais or Messiaen was a day wasted in those days! So hearing that concert, on that day, in Nederland was quite an amazing bit of synchronicity. 


My two favorite pieces from the concert were both by Jehan Alain: the Deuxieme Fantasie was just so fun to hear again. It sounded like an audible version of a hanging garden in some ancient city in the Far East. And then of course his most famous piece, Litanies, with its obsessive rhythmic drive. I foresee my Alain CD getting a dust-off when we get home! 


Today I had coffee (and appletaart!) with Jackie Broek, another friend from the old days:

We sat outside (!) at Brinkmann's Cafe on the Grote Markt. The appeltaart was excellent, and we enjoyed a great conversation about life in the NL. Jim joined us after a time, and we all went to the Frans Hals museum together. More delights from the Dutch Golden Age! My favorite was a view of St. Bavo's and the Grote Markt by Berckheyde. (I bought a poster to take home for the exorbitant price of one euro!)

View of St. Bavo's by Berckheyde

What I love about this painting is that it really doesn't look all that different now, all these hundreds of years later!