Lush, exotic, precision-orchestrated: premiere of Richard Rijnvos’ Amérique de Sud
11 Apr 2022
By Rose Dodd, 10 abril 2022. Looking towards the audience’s summer holiday plans, the concert billing’s “imaginary world travels” presented during the Netherlands Radio Philharmonic Orchestra’s NTR Zaterdagmatinee at the Concertgebouw was a sneak peek towards luscious, exotic foreign climes, tentatively now almost in reach. Unfurling before us were Richard Rijnvos’ Amérique du Sud, completing his Grand Atlas – répresentation du monde universel en sept tableaux musicaux, followed by Manuel de Falla’s Noches en los jardines de España, and Antonín Dvořák’s Symphony no. 9 in E minor, “From the New World”. Considering the constituent parts that go into making an orchestra a cohesive whole, I was truly awed by the flexibility of the NRPO in its breadth of programming. Contained fluidly under the baton of Pablo Heras-Casado they breathed as one, in three distinct guises. No mean feat, given the times.