Mathilde Wantenaar | Composer
TROUW: Mathilde Wantenaar composes as if kneading a loaf of bread Her brain is working on a composition all day long, Mathilde Wantenaar explains about her profession. Composing a piece of classical music is first and foremost hard work, making hours, writing measures and chords, composer Mathilde Wantenaar (1993) says about her profession. She does this hard slogging in a modest place, four floors up in Amsterdam East. The eighty-eight keys of a grand piano as an electronic keyboard within reach, as well as that other keyboard - of the computer. A 'real' piano is around the corner from the little wall. So hard work it is, but you also have to be lucky, Wantenaar specifies. Luck presents itself as a good motif or a beautiful melody. "At a moment like that, I get totally sucked into the creative process. I go to bed with it and I get up with it. My brain is working on that composition all day, and it goes on in the night too. You start fantasising in a free way and then I can really look forward to the process that follows. The feeling that the piece can still go in any direction after this beginning, can still become anything, is wonderful. But unfortunately there is a downside to that coin. I can sometimes be so monomaniacal about it that everything about such a new composition starts to displease me after a while, so that more and more often I think: "What I made is really nothing at all". Wantenaar is one of the most successful composers in the Netherlands. At a young age, she was already making pieces of music, which her father jotted down for her on music paper. When the Asko⏐Schönberg ensemble did a composition project at Wantenaar's secondary school, her piece was chosen and subsequently played in the Recital Hall of the Concertgebouw. Wantenaar then decided to go to the Amsterdam Conservatory, where she studied composition with Willem Jeths and Wim Henderickx. In 2019, her career got off to a flying start when she received honourable commissions from the Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra and De Nationale Opera. For years in her head Her Rhapsody for Piano and Strings, commissioned by Daria van den Bercken and the Piano Biennale, premiered this year and received fantastic reviews. In a live spoken commentary before that premiere, Wantenaar said that the main theme of the Rhapsody had been in her head for years, and that she had finally been able to give it a place. That raises the question of how a melody like that gets into her brain, and when the right piece presents itself in which to use that inspiration. "I often find myself playing the piano," Wantenaar explains. "Suddenly a certain chord can emerge, or a motif, a theme, a melody. It can really be anything. By repeating it over and over again, such a chord or motif develops. You're basically kneading a loaf of bread." This is how the theme that is now in her Rhapsody was born. "The theme was kind of left over for the piece I was working on at the time. I couldn't fit it into anything. But it kept going around in my head all these years, playing it every now and then. You have, as it were, a drawer in your head and in that drawer that scrawl is stored. Then suddenly a composition presents itself in which you feel that scribble falls exactly into place. "She is monomaniacal about other things too. "It's obviously in my character. For instance, I only recently got a smartphone. Before, I didn't want it because I thought it was only distracting. I discovered that you can learn Japanese on that phone via the Duo Lingo app. When I compose, I have to mark my time and not get distracted. Then, if you sit behind the piano in a very disciplined way, you always find something, in my experience. You have to play with your material, and eventually it comes. It usually works like this: if I have got hold of something, it also gets hold of me at the same time, because the find never lets go of me.' I am more of a conduit "You find the inspiration in the music itself. Or in a poetic idea, not in myself as a person. I don't see myself as very interesting or relevant. I am more of a conduit and a creator. My personal experience, taste and skill do matter. They determine how it turns out, but not the core issue. A starting point for this can be something that touches you, an existing piece of music for instance, or a fragment when I'm improvising, or when I accidentally hit a 'wrong' chord. Such a chord that surprises me. That sound then becomes something you want to touch. The first feeling of being seized by something is so joyful. Is that divine inspiration? Or just hard work? It's both. That you are walking in the forest and suddenly get an inspiration out of nowhere? There is certainly truth in that, but afterwards you have to work with it to make music out of it. "In the early days of her career as a composer, Wantenaar was far too fanatical, she confesses. The balance was completely off at that time. She says she used to work a lot at night. She loves the magic of the night, but she did not really experience the stories about the quiet and stimulus-free night as a source of inspiration. Then rather the end of the day, the falling dusk, when the little birds sing for a while. The end of the day brings a kind of relaxation, and when there is relaxation, inspiration can almost come naturally. "I have had some tough years. As I said, I was far too focused, excessively eager to learn. I wanted too much. My mind kept up with that pace, but my body didn't. In my final exam period, I went way over my limits. Playing the piano all the time, working into the night. A burning sensation developed in my arms. I have been in pain off and on for six years now, and pain affects you mentally. More breaks, more exercise, a good night's sleep "I used to be much more casual. I miss that enormously. Most of all, I miss the naturalness with which I could do things. I'm almost 30 now, and my priority now is to take better care of my body. More breaks, more exercise, a good night's sleep. That constant pressure I'm under no longer in the mood for that. The feeling of having a gun held to my head with the message: 'Now it MUST come!' I now understand better that there is a contradiction between 'have to' and 'want to'. I want to make my hours because my sense of discipline is great, but I do other things in between. And even then, sometimes it happens that I am at the top of the stairs to leave, to do something else, and suddenly I feel the inspiration. Then I do go back immediately yes. After all, the imagination is the tool you use to build a piece. "If you put in the hours, you naturally make progress. Three good sizes can help you further. I sometimes finish much earlier than I thought I would need, although it's usually the other way round. When you are ready? When a piece is finished, quite simply. But finished does not mean that no note can be changed. I don't rewrite pieces, but I do make small adjustments during the rehearsal process. "A composer who doesn't stand behind his piece, I don't understand that. When it is finished, I have to back my piece and get it out into the world. Doubt is always there, and you go from total euphoria to 'this is nothing at all' during the composition process. There is more and more emotion and time in such a composition, it grows and grows. Letting go afterwards is difficult." Suddenly the pieces of the puzzle fall into place While composing, Wantenaar collects pieces of material. She looks for atmosphere, for a certain direction. "They are puzzle pieces that belong together, only you have no idea yet how they fit together. And suddenly those pieces fall into place. That's such a beautiful eureka moment. Of course that piece had to be there, you think, why didn't I see that before? "The shape a piece has to have is a boundary, and that's good. I am now working on an accordion concerto for Vincent van Amsterdam. The scoring, i.e. which instruments play along, is fixed, as is the duration. Within that framework, I am free to do what I want. I can make it a long piece, or split it into different, contrasting parts. After that, I ask myself all sorts of questions. What is unique about the accordion? What kind of atmosphere suits it? Of course you talk to the soloist, and Vincent already gave some answers. For example, he likes melancholic, Russian music. "Then I started thinking about the bellows of the accordion, where the air is produced that makes the sound. I think that accordion bellows are incredibly beautiful. It looks so theatrical. The instrument is a maverick in a way, but also a storyteller. Like a troubadour. An accordion can fall open like a book because of that bellows. So at the beginning of the piece the book opens, at the end the covers go back together. How much air do you let that bellows produce, which reeds are then engaged inside, and what sound comes out? That associative process is very important to me." That first rehearsal of your new piece! You come away from that with an existential crisis. Many musicians therefore don't want the composer there that first time. Sometimes it's good right away, and the most important thing is if the musicians are inspired by it. You feel that, and that gives joy. You're giving something away after all, you've made a gift, and then you want it to be appreciated. Suddenly I realise that the person or persons for whom you write something are also a source of inspiration. As a composer, you want to make something that has universal value, but while making it, I unconsciously or consciously have to think of the musicians for whom I am making it." Peter van der Lint, Trouw, 2 August 2023
DE GROENE AMSTERDAMMER: The music has to say it She writes tonally, lyrically, and remarkably adeptly for orchestra. Dutch composer Mathilde Wantenaar wrote a violin concerto for Simone Lamsma. Suddenly she was there, Mathilde Wantenaar. Year 1993, instruments cello and piano, and her voice. Studied with Willem Jeths and Wim Henderickx, noticed young and settled in early. She has written for choir, ensembles, sometimes for theatre and, remarkably adeptly, for symphony orchestra. She is not alone in that. The symphonic seems to be experiencing a small renaissance here. For Wantenaar's contemporaries Rick van Veldhuizen, Jan-Peter de Graaff, Karmit Fadael or Christiaan Richter, after half a century of Dutch ensemble culture, the orchestra is once again a home away from home. Are lyricism and tonality nothing special anymore in the postmodern musical landscape, the ease of writing and of discovering sound was very much so with this composer. Fairy Tales for violin and piano was tender without false shame. The mysterious colourite of Prélude à une nuit américaine (2019) for orchestra brought a rejuvenated impressionism with the poetic precision of daydreaming. It flowed freely and unspoilt, not contrived but internally experienced. Night Music (2019), arrangement for string orchestra of her Octet (2017) for two string quartets, was a murmuring interlude, light in the dark, the divined strings tuneful fin de siècle. Nothing sounded orchestrated, thought from a different colourite than you heard. The Debussyian, if you can call it that, manifested itself there not as a pastiche-like imitation but as boldly following that track. Wantenaar can make sound float, melodies roam singingly. A work for bass clarinet is tellingly called Dwalende melodie (2015). Just as a polyphonic piece of hers could have been called 'Dwalende harmonie'. Harmony, tonal harmony, both the most compellingly directing aspect of music and the most magical, the questioning that allows time and space to stiffen and move at will. Endlessly fascinating, she says, "how you can place a note and put another note against it in such a way that the note that was there first changes colour without becoming another note. It's the drop of ink in water that makes everything change colour.' Conventional? Anyone who wants to call her that, she says, should do so by all means. She does not see why music from 15 years ago is more relevant than music from a century ago. In Wantenaar 's orchestral works, besides harmonic layering, you could hear something else fermenting: the mimic expression of theatre, lyrical theatre. So came an opera in 2019, A Song for the Moon. A children's opera, if such a thing exists, based on a fairy tale by Toon Tellegen. Composed for an impressive coalition, including The National Opera, Brussels Monnaie, Opera Zuid and the Festival d'Aix-en-Provence. Beautiful, simple, deep story. Mole comes above ground, sees the moon looking sad, tries to cheer him up with a song and what happens next becomes the opera. So a piece about music really, about making contact. Everything was running beautifully. Rehearsals were revving up, the premiere was approaching. Then came the covid disaster. 'They literally came in during a rehearsal and said, "Let everything fall out of your hands, it's over."' Thus began a time when the artist was condemned to accept a fate that also became a self-test: he existed, but he no longer existed. The artist, in the metaphorical guise of the mole in the stranded opera, though it came good, lives precisely from contact with others. Who tries to comfort a lonely moon face with a song. Whatever the government did for the cultural sector in time of need, those moments of lostness lingered. Wantenaar became depressed. It was more than the covid crisis. Too much to handle. Adding a vocal study, years of very hard work. The pressure was too much, the pressure on a talent whose name was suddenly on everyone's lips. The pressure she avoided as a composer by consistently living under a rock. She learned something from that. That splendid isolation cannot be a solution to a problem that both comfortably and tiresomely plagued her and contemporaries, especially when a virus cuts off all avenues to the outside world. Then comes the inner confrontation with the time when everything is possible and allowed in a culture without unlivable aesthetic taboos, so the story of a thousand roads of which not one seems to lead linearly to Rome anymore. There you sit in your Amsterdam attic room all alone being the one voice in that totally fragmented cultural landscape. She got over it, and is now reminded of British composer and conductor George Benjamin. 'Who saw composers now all sitting on their own little islands. Everyone there is free to do what he wants, but stays on his island. That can be lonely in the sense that there is nothing to oppose or join. I am happy to be alive now, but I also think about the loneliness and lostness that freedom can bring.' There is only one remedy against that feeling of nothingness; not to hinder the uninhibited urge to create with ifs and buts. 'That you just try to make something beautiful that you find worthwhile enough to share with others.' But in the end, doesn't an artist monomaniacally want to create something great? Wantenaar is ambivalent about it: 'The idea of pursuing excellence and going very far in that appeals to me. But the attitude from which you do that should also protect you from the consequences. If you think what you do is very important, you can completely clam up. I think I have evolved in that. When I was very insecure at the beginning of my time at the conservatoire, I made myself small, but in retrospect I think maybe that was also a kind of arrogance. You have the idea that you must be very good at it, so you obviously have a high opinion of yourself. And therefore you are weighed down by the fear that you cannot meet demands that you apparently think it is reasonable to impose on yourself. It becomes self-aggrandisement if you set the bar higher for yourself than for others. There is or was a kind of contradiction there with me. On the one hand, I think what I do is very important, and I want to get it absolutely right - but if I start blowing it up too much, I can no longer write in freedom. That's why you have to keep that open-mindedness and naivety, that smallness, with you as a kind of protection, make space for it.' It's the space, she says, that you need anyway to discover what in dialogue with you your notes want. 'Because of course that is composing too: being able to let it emerge. I am always reminded of Stravinsky, who in his Poetics of Music describes the process of composing in much the same way as that mole of mine, a little animal that is digging and searching for something, and doesn't quite know what it is looking for until it finds it and thinks: oh what a beautiful chord, what a beautiful moon.' But then she used to bump into her own high-minded measuring stick that paralysed her inwardly. 'Later, when I went to study singing after my composition studies, I admired people who were really good and confident, but at the same time dared to come out in front of the fact that they couldn't do certain things. I think that's a healthy and loving attitude towards yourself. I think that is also so important because, for me, a lot of composing is a mental battle to be able to write at all. On the one hand, it's all side issues, i.e. your ego and what you think others think of you, but you have to find a good way to relate to them so you can concentrate on the main thing.' That: in dialogue with what she hears, with what presents itself thinking and feeling and playing. In her new violin concerto for Simone Lamsma, the first theme of the first movement pointed the way per aspera ad astra. It is a 'slow, gliding, octotonic melody', cantabile misterioso, in which minor and major thirds alternate indefinably melancholic. She heard both 'something lilting and sultry' and something menacing in it. Out of that polarity grew a piece in which light triumphs after much conflict and struggle, after in the finale the dark forces of the first theme are defeated for good. The work begins lilting and gentle, rocking in three- and six-quarter time. A gently plucked harp part, sometimes in dialogue with the soloist, ratifies the lyrical keynote, grazioso and dolce innocente. Then the orchestra dives lugubriously into the lows. Nervous triplets dispel menacingly, minaccioso, the aura of innocence. Agitated, the soloist glissando shoots up an octave. For the first time, a hitherto muted orchestra peaks fortissimo. Then begins a wordless suffering, cantando lamentoso. Follows a cadenza that, by way of synopsis, explores the entire field of tension once more, from appassionata to dolce doloroso. In the extremely slow, extremely soft second movement, the violin is almost completely silent. Whisper softly played clusters of seconds of horns and trumpets blow mystery into the brooding atmosphere in the eye of the storm. Wantenaar deliberately lets the soloist fall silent after the rollercoaster of the first movement. Virtually emotionless, she plays one long, exhausted note. Until she gradually recovers in the finale, cantabile danzante, back into the light but still poco triste, until the returning life forces towards the final rally grace her and everyone else. Thinking about what Mathilde Wantenaar went through as a composer, you could hear an autobiographical history in it. It's not like that, she says. Her music tells, but not with words, and not a specific story. While the recital notes subtly name the atmosphere, the music had to say it. And gladly without magnification and empty loudness. This had to be a real, substantial violin concerto, says Wantenaar, and Simone Lamsma had urged her to put her to work, but she sought a good balance between intimate and full. The emotions were not allowed to get too big. Because then, she says, you damage the fragility. And lo and behold: this piece too floats. Bas van Putten, De Groene Amsterdammer, 15 September 2022
TROUW: 'This ís a real opera!', says Mathilde Wantenaar about her children's opera You really don't have to make concessions when composing for children, Mathilde Wantenaar thinks. Her children's opera Een lied voor de maan, based on a story by Toon Tellegen, will premiere on Sunday. What children's songs did she used to listen to herself? Composer Mathilde Wantenaar (27) has to think about that for a moment. "We always had a house full of music. My mother is a singing teacher, my father plays accordion. We mainly made music together, where I would sing, and a bit later play along on my guitar or cello. But children's songs from the past? Oh yes, we sang a lot from the songbook Ja Zuster, Nee Zuster songs by Annie M.G. Schmidt and Harry Bannink." The question seems important for someone who has written an opera for children as young as 6. Because isn't it true that as a composer, you then have to immerse yourself in the world of children? Including all those songs? "I make no concessions while composing, even though it is for children. Opera for them is not very different from opera for adults. The music might have a slightly different atmosphere, but that's down to the environment, the context, for which you write that music. So in this case with A song for the moon by Toon Tellegen. You automatically adapt your writing to that text. Tellegen's stories already exude a certain atmosphere that resonates with children. It is such beautiful language, simple and poetic at the same time. Tellegen can say a lot with few words. And few words, that is a very important starting point for opera. Because in opera, everything takes three times as long because of the music, so a concise text helps you enormously as a composer." Romance between wolf and sheep Wantenaar did not cross the threshold at opera in her younger years, she confesses, but she vividly remembers a performance of Janácek's The Sly Fox at De Nationale Opera, which her parents took her to when she was about 12 years old. "The fantastic set, the music, and all those bizarre animals on stage. An amazingly beautiful, dancing dragonfly, for example, the busy chickens and all those cute little foxes. It made an indelible impression on me. In a smaller theatre as a child, I also once saw a play about a romance between a wolf and a sheep in a beautiful winter landscape. I remember the enchantment and the feeling of wanting to immerse myself in that world as a child. Ah yes, I am still a big kid I believe. "When I was 9 years old, I was already making up pieces on the piano. My first compositions. I then stored these very well in my head, and later played them for my father, who then wrote them down for me. With that, I developed a good memory for notes. In secondary school, I was a good student and wanted to study chemistry or industrial design. But then there was a project at school with the musicians of Asko|Schönberg. You could write music pieces for them. My piece was chosen and played in the Concertgebouw's Small Hall. I loved it, and that's how I came to go to the conservatoire. I didn't want a life full of regrets." Since studying composition at the conservatoire, she was captivated by the opera genre. She ventilates her admiration for Rimsky-Korsakov's opera The Legend of the Invisible City of Kitesh, which she saw during that period. Totally captivated by that big fairy-tale forest with those huge trees on the stage, she was. And now she has then created a kind of fairy opera of her own, starring animals: a mole, a cricket, an earthworm, a grasshopper, a frog and three mice. Music lesson from the cricket "The European Network of Opera Academies organised a workshop for young creators. The National Opera invited me to participate in it. The workshop was about making opera for young audiences. Creators came there to share their experiences, and that's where I met Béatrice Lachaussée, now the director of A Song for the Moon. We were then able to spend a week with singers performing our sketches for a class of children. So incredibly fun and sweet. That's how the opera was born. "I stayed very close to Tellegen's text, which I adapted together with dramaturge Willem Bruls. There are aria-like pieces in the music, but it is otherwise completely through-composed. There is music under all the texts. I intervened slightly in the story because I wanted the mole himself to rewrite the song. His first song for the moon didn't work out; the moon remains sad. In Tellegen's story, it's not the mole, but the cricket who adjusts the music, but as a composer I didn't think that was appropriate. So I changed that: the mole gets music lessons from the cricket, gets inspired and rewrites the song. "Thus the cricket's lesson, the aria With music you can make anything, based on another text by Tellegen, became the core of the opera. And then it takes the courage of the grasshopper and the other animals to actually re-enact the song. For the drama, it is good that there is something to lose. Will the moon shine now, or will the mole stay underground forever? 'Opera tastes like more' "Because the mole is a nocturnal animal, and as a character somewhat wistful, I insisted on having an alto flute and a basset horn in the orchestra. They make such a beautifully warm and sad under-the-ground sound. And I am happy with my bunch of strings, and with my guitar. With an acoustic guitar you can accompany a voice well, there's a bit of jazz in it, and you get a singer-songwriter association. The latter in turn fits the story nicely." Ever make a real opera again? "This ís a real opera!", says Wantenaar indignantly. "For children, but also for adults, just like Tellegen's stories. For me, opera definitely tastes like more. The drama element of it and the psychology of the characters, it appeals to me enormously." Peter van der Lint, Trouw, 19 March 2021
HET PAROOL: Composer Mathilde Wantenaar: 'You can hear in my pieces what you want. Every feeling is legitimate' When violinist Simone Lamsma was asked by the NTR ZaterdagMatinee who she would like to play a new violin concerto by, the answer was clear: Mathilde Wantenaar. 'I had no idea that a violin concerto by me was on her wish list.' The commission for the violin concerto came as a welcome surprise to the young composer. "A fantastic opportunity. She plays brilliantly," Mathilde Wantenaar (1993) says of violinist Simone Lamsma. Incidentally, the composition is not specifically focused on Lamsma's playing, but arose organically. "She is attracted to my music, then I also trust my intuition. But I did think about her a lot. I am inspired by what she plays, so there is definitely an exchange and mutual inspiration." On another level, Wantenaar does always engage with the musicians playing her pieces. "It inspires me to think about the musicians who will perform my music. I want to write music that invites them to make music." After months of working on a piece, it can be hard to let go, but the connection with the musicians also makes that letting go beautiful. "For the most part, composing is very solitary. The moment you leave your composition bubble, you invite other people to put their musicality and interpretation into it and take it to the next level." Wantenaar is also very aware of the audience. "A teacher once said that as a composer, you have to sit in three different chairs: the composer's, the musician's and the audience's." Wantenaar's music is therefore not only an invitation to the musicians to celebrate their musicality, but also to the audience to unleash their imagination on the music. "I see music as telling an abstract story. You take your listeners through different colours, atmospheres and textures." These elements then create an arc of tension and direction for the listener. "It's a door you open, with an invitation to enter," he says. New world Thus, the new violin concerto promises to be an adventure. It consists of three movements: a classical form, each with its own character. "The first movement is a play of light and dark. It has something sultry, but at the same time something menacing. The second part is a resting point, in which we empty out completely. There is a softness and sadness in that. The last movement is playful and uninhibited. It ends full of bravura, exuberant and festive." Wantenaar did not want to convey a specific emotion to the audience with this piece, she says. "Everyone can hear what they want in it. All feelings are legitimate." She does hope that the audience goes through a journey together. "I find that so wonderful. That moment when everything comes together: the composition, the musicians, the audience, in a hall built just for that. There we all sit, ready to let vibrating air in. There's something magical about that. When you travel, a new world opens up to you; so it is when you step into the concert hall." Britt van Klaveren, Het Parool, 22 September 2022
BUMA CULTUUR: Life of Buma Classical Award winner and composer Mathilde Wantenaar And this year the Buma Classical Award goes to… composer Mathilde Wantenaar! In its annual review of copyright income, BumaStemra sees that as a young woman, the 30-year-old Amsterdam woman stands out above a predominantly older and male field of composers and arrangers. A lot of work has been performed, written and on December 8 there was also a striking premiere of her accordion concert in Vienna. It is time to visit her in her apartment in East Amsterdam, where most of that music was written. Do it yourself Mathilde Wantenaar prefers to make everything herself. Whether it is the spicy cake from the oven that scents her entire house, the dark blue blouse that she tries to make at her kitchen table using sewing patterns. Or her home itself, which she transformed from a bare attic floor with peeling walls into a bright, friendly apartment with plants, musical instruments and art. Composing full time Yes, making something out of nothing is her own thing, but that blouse just won’t get finished. The pieces of fabric are waiting patiently next to the sewing machine, but Wantenaar hardly finds the time for it. She’s too busy doing what she loves most: music. She has an abundance of composition assignments: her agenda is so full that she can no longer take on a new piece. She is composing full-time, or ‘writing’, as she calls it, there in that modest attic space in East Amsterdam. Her own “studio” A kitchen and living room in one, with a piano less than two meters from the kitchen table -that is where she spends most of her time composing. The keys give her an overview of all the voices she is trying to interweave. Above the kitchen there is a loft as a bedroom and behind the sliding door along the roof truss a mini dormer window, which just fits a desk with a computer on which she works on her music. She blocks her internet while writing and often works into the evenings, she reluctantly admits. Luck and hard work She calls herself privileged that she can make a living from composing. Born into a musical family, with musician parents who paid for her music lessons and did not stop her from going to the Conservatory. Teachers who encouraged her, gave her self-confidence and helped her with her first assignments. She initially humbly omits her own role in her success. Because she was also lucky, she thinks. “You can work as hard as you like, but you have to have people around you who encourage you, who open doors for you.” She says that at the end of her studies, composer Willem Jeths (one of her main subject teachers at the Conservatory) arranged for her to write a piece for violinist Lisa Ferschtman. She liked it so much that she ordered another piece from Wantenaar, which was later adapted for string orchestra. “That’s how the ball started rolling,” she reflects. Other pieces by Wantenaar also began to lead a life of their own: her first orchestral work, Prélude á une nuit américaine, which she wrote for the Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra, was later played again by the Netherlands Philharmonic under the direction of conductor Markus Poschner. “Twice, even,” says Wantenaar. Poschner then took it back to various other orchestras: it was played in Antwerp last March and on November 17 and 18 it will even be played overseas, in Salt Lake City. More luck But Wantenaar never knows in advance whether a piece will succeed. “That’s the risk of new music. You try to deliver quality, but whether it has that magic that makes it stand out above the rest… that is also a matter of luck. You just have to find those things that make it beautiful.” At the same time, she thinks that’s the fun of it: if you let someone write something new, no one knows what it will be, not even the creator. Be your own audience In determining what is ‘beautiful’, Wantenaar is guided by what fascinates her, what she is captivated by and what she therefore wants to let others hear. She doesn’t think in terms of ‘what the audience wants’ or ‘what is accessible’, because for her there is no distinction between them. As a composer, you cannot help but be your own audience, she believes. When composing, she sits in the seat of the listener, the musician and herself. “The audience feels it when the musicians enjoy playing. Everyone then gets involved, and you all become completely one.” Excruciating route But before that happens, Wantenaar has already gone through a long and sometimes excruciating process with her work, especially when it concerns a large piece. In the first phase she mainly gains inspiration. For her latest work, the accordion concerto for about eighty musicians with soloist Vincent van Amsterdam, which will premiere in Vienna on December 8, she first fantasized about all the types of accordion music she knew. From the jazz standards and French musettes she used to dance to when her father played the accordion, to the raw, expressive contemporary sounds of Sofia Gubaidulina. Then, with some sketches, she tried a few things together with Van Amsterdam and his instrument. She then developed the ideas, after which the work became increasingly concrete and intensive. In that phase she usually gets completely sucked into the piece and it becomes difficult to eventually let go. Tango That process is wonderful and terrible at the same time, says Wantenaar. That’s why she makes those clothes, for example, to be able to step out completely when she’s stuck. Or she goes for a walk, humming her piece out loud. She demonstrates how she then walks like an absent-minded composer, shaking her head back and forth, hair covering her face: “I then walk very strangely down the street,” says Wantenaar. “Especially with that tango.” Do it again and again Moreover, composing can be lonely. Wantenaar finds it difficult to maintain social contacts. “Everything just goes on. That’s a thing. We haven’t even been on our honeymoon yet,” she gestures to her husband Jonas, who, as now, usually works in the same room on his laptop. “We just keep postponing it.” She is grateful that she has so much work, but can also curse about it sometimes. “Then I think: this is not how I want to live my life.” Yet she is now doing what she wanted as a child, when she felt herself being drawn to the piano to play with those sounds and voices. Crafting with those nuts still gives her pleasure every day. Then, joking: “It also helps that Jonas sometimes laughs at me when I lie here with a tormented mind hating my work. Then I see it through his eyes and I can laugh about it too. And if the musicians ultimately enjoy playing it and the audience likes it, then I immediately want to do it again.” Stella Vrijmoed, Buma Cultuur, 11 December 2023
DE VOLKSKRANT: A frog as heroic tenor: Mathilde Wantenaar (27) created a children's opera from an animal story by Toon Tellegen Thursday kicks off the fifth edition of the Opera Forward Festival, entirely online this time. With this festival, the National Opera gives a new generation of artists the chance to explore the future of opera. Composer Mathilde Wantenaar (27) wrote the children's opera Een lied voor de maan for the festival, which was actually due to premiere last year, but can still be seen Sunday afternoon. The work lasts more than 45 minutes and is composed to Toon Tellegen's story of the same name.How did you come across this text? 'Someone from the team read it to her children and gave me the tip. My parents also used to read to me from Toon Tellegen. I still love it. The story is about a shy mole who writes a song for the moon. Mice and a frog perform it led by the grasshopper. But the moon doesn't like it. It is too sombre, says the wise cricket. He helps the mole write a new version of the song. Despite their uncertainty, the animals now manage to make the moon shine. 'I had asked Tellegen to write the libretto (the text of the opera, ed.) himself, but he didn't feel much like it. We were allowed to use the story, though. I hope to meet him again. Because of corona, that didn't happen last year.'How do you compose for children? 'To my mind, I didn't approach it any differently than normal. You don't have to simplify it. Children are sensitive and open, especially to the poetic. They don't necessarily have to understand everything either. There are all kinds of things that pique their interest. The open wonderment, everything between fantasy and reality; that's what I wanted to create a warm world out of. Laughs: 'Maybe it will be a huge flop, but I actually didn't worry about whether it is comprehensible enough. The story is already so clear. Tellegen's language is at once poetic and direct. It takes five times as long to sing something as it does to say something. He can say so much with so little. In my view, that is ideal for an opera libretto.'How does that then translate into your music? 'I read the text out loud and sang it. The melodies then come naturally. They are such distinct characters for me. The mole's childishness has an introspective, dreamy sound. While the frog, on the contrary, is a kind of heroic tenor, singing Puccini, thinking himself great. The grasshopper is the maestro, the great conductor, but after the first flop he is off his game and binds in, he softens up. 'The mole's loneliness is a melody without words, it comes back again and again. Sometimes, when the mole is alone on stage, the other four singers sing his thoughts four-part, like a kind of chorale. 'The six-piece orchestra includes a flutist and a clarinettist. Among others, they also play the alto flute and basset horn. With low horns, I wanted to sound the warmth of the underground and the nocturnal atmosphere. I used the basset horn for the theme of loneliness, while it also sounds beautiful in the jazzy pieces. I used all kinds of styles and genres and even quoted from Beethoven to the song Pretty Woman.'The premiere is now without an audience in the hall, but online. Did a lot of adjustments have to be made? 'Musically not, but there was another real camera direction on it as a third layer. So then there was another team running around thinking all sorts of things about it. I didn't interfere in anything. I found that difficult, but I sat down to knit to stay calm and was glad I was just there, should questions arise'. Maartje Stokkers, De Volkskrant, 17 March 2021
HET PAROOL: Mathilde Wantenaar wrote a family opera: 'Children immediately show when they find it boring' This year's Opera Forward Festival will take place entirely online. Mathilde Wantenaar's second opera, A Song for the Moon, cancelled at the last minute in 2020, therefore gets another chance. Because of corona and the lockdown, the 2020 Opera Forward Festival fell through. A year later, little has changed. That's why, starting tomorrow, De Nationale Opera will bring the fifth edition of the OFF online in its entirety, with performances of Kurt Weill: The Seven Deadly Sins, starring Eva-Maria Westbroek and Anna Drijver, a preview of Upload, Michel van der Aa's new film opera, and Mathilde Wantenaar's family performance Een lied voor de maan (6+), on a text by Toon Tellegen. Wantenaar's second opera Een lied voor de maan was cancelled in 2020 a few days before its premiere, as the lockdown kicked in. "That was a shock, because I didn't follow the news very much," the composer says by phone. "I was totally absorbed in the rehearsals. Surely such a small opera, in a small cast, will go on? That's what I thought. But no. And then suddenly we were all sitting at home. It felt very unreal at first, because you put your heart and soul into it. You are also not at all concerned about whether or not it will continue, but first and foremost whether it will turn out well. It all only dawned on me later. At first I felt a strange relief, because I could hardly remember what it was like when you don't have to do anything anymore. A surreal holiday feeling. But on the night of the premiere, I got sadder and sadder, slowly realising more and more what kind of drama we all got ourselves into. "Have you tinkered with it yet? Because then you could now. "No, hardly at all. The musicians and singers were enthusiastic. I was happy with how it turned out. "How have you fared in the past year? "Everyone thinks composers now have all the time they need to develop ideas in peace and quiet, but it's not like that with me. On the one hand, even under normal circumstances my life is a kind of existence in quarantine, because that is the nature of composing, but things are really different now. You miss the moment when you get together with musicians and your piece comes to life. That makes it all rather unreal at the moment." Wantenaar is among the most appealing young composers of the moment and has no complaints about work right after completing her studies. "I hadn't dared to hope it would go so well right away," she says. She played herself into the limelight with Het Verborgene for string orchestra and then soon got to sink her teeth into an opera project for the Opera Forward Festival. That piece, Personar, was so successful that she was commissioned by De Nationale Opera to write a youth opera. "Through DNO, I was able to go to a workshop of the European Network of Opera Academies on creating operas for young audiences. It involved composers, directors, costume designers. Very instructive. I met the director Béatrice Lachaussée there, with whom I wanted to write a fairytale opera. Looking for a story, I thought of Toon Tellegen, because I find his language so beautiful and musical. Someone pointed me to A Song for the Moon and it was perfect. Music is central to it. It's about the power of music and that music can bring all animals together - it couldn't be better. I wanted a text that was simple and poetic at the same time; no flowery, pompous words. "Did you have a line-up in mind right away? You now use string trio, guitar, flutes and clarinets. "I puzzled over it for a long time. Actually, I wanted a larger line-up, but that would have become too expensive. We now have six musicians and five singers. I wanted to use a four-voice vocal ensemble and also a guitar, because I had a jazzy atmosphere and a soft melancholy in my head, because that fits well with the moll. And furthermore, I wanted both strings and horns. The flautist also has to act. And the clarinettist also plays the basset horn, whose sad colour I thought suited the story nicely. "Is composing a second opera more difficult than a first? "It was mainly different. My first one didn't really have a clear story. We also really started from scratch, so I didn't know how Rosita Wolkers' text was going to be. For A Song for the Moon, I had Toon Tellegen's story as a starting point. So there is a form right away. They are really two completely different pieces. I really want to write another one. And another one. It's a family show. Did you keep the music simpler because of that? "No. I haven't made any concessions. In a way, it is also liberating to write for children, because you don't have to worry about whether you are a serious composer. By the way, you really have to bare your bottom, because children let you know immediately if they find it boring. Besides, they have such an open imagination and are so sensitive to the poetic and the surprising that you really don't have to hold back musically." Erik Voermans, Het Parool, 17 March 2021
NRC: 'When you're young, someone has to open doors for you' Female composers Mathilde Wantenaar (1993) and Meriç Artaç (1990). "Yeah say, what does it matter that I'm a woman? I write notes." Bistro Le Coeur in Amsterdam's Jordaan district is almost home for composer Mathilde Wantenaar (Amsterdam, 1993). She lives directly opposite, just barely, in the floor above her parents. ,,I just bought my first own flat with my boyfriend," she says. ,,The renovation now coincides with the final pieces of instrumentation for my family opera A Song for the Moon, an amount of work I greatly overestimated. My longest piece so far lasted 20 minutes, A Song an hour. Finetuning takes correspondingly more time, I am now discovering. This is my most stressful period ever." Can you still call a composer commissioned by The National Opera to perform a new work "promising" or "talented"? Or has such a composer already arrived? Mathilde Wantenaar shrugs. "As a composer, you are called young until you are 35." Composer Meriç Artaç (Istanbul, 1990) has been teaching at the Amsterdam Conservatory of Music since 2018. She mentors talent. But she too defines generously. Artaç: ,,Call me whatever you want. I am also young to teach." However you draw the boundaries, 'talent' remains a complex issue. Is it the X-Factor for great art? Or just the starting shot of success? Artaç: ,,Without a fine antenna for music, it is difficult to become a composer. But if you don't develop your talent, you will lose it. It's always about the mix of discipline and giftedness and the will to keep that interaction going, I think." Wantenaar: "I think skill is incredibly important. The more skills, the more opportunities to find your own voice. I find it quite hysterical when artists are demanded to always be original. By definition, art is built on the shoulders of predecessors. No music is created out of nothing, purely out of 'genius'." Fantasy characters As a child, Wantenaar sat on the shoulders of two musician parents. "Composing I always did from childhood, it was natural for me." Artaç grew up in Istanbul, in a family in which visual artists predominated. She herself turned out to be a piano talent, and went to the conservatory as a toddler. "Playing, improvising, composing - it was all part of the same thing for me at first. Only later, when I ended up at the Rotterdam conservatory after a tip-off from a friend, did they become more separate parts of my identity." Currently and next season, Artaç is guest composer/curator of Dag in de Branding, a festival for new music in The Hague. On 7 March, her new work Zizos, named after the three-headed main character, will be heard there in Korzo. Zizos is not the first wonderful fantasy character Artaç has brought to life in music theatre. She bases her characters on "real experiences and encounters, and things that bother me," she says. She then gives her characters their own world, and their own music. ''The interaction with the other characters and the visual design are very important in this. Drawing, designing sets and costumes - I love it all and also need it to feel complete." Mathilde Wantenaar nods. ,,I recognise that broad interest, but I also find it difficult. To compose well, I also need to be able to shut myself off a bit." Meriç Artaç: ,,On the one hand, you need seclusion, but on the other, you don't want to shut out life. Ultimately, it's the people I meet that inspire the stories I want to tell. Too much ivory tower is not good. But a little should." Own language When Meriç Artaç first set foot in the conservatory in Rotterdam, a hefty culture shock awaited her, she says. ,,My piano training in Istanbul was essentially Russian: making mistakes was taboo. In Rotterdam I learned that making art is all about making mistakes. The freedom this brought was a relief, but what should I do with it? The most modern piece I had played in Turkey was by Debussy. This opened up a world of contemporary music in which I really had to learn to find my way. Only at the end of the study did I understand: music theatre is it for me. In the connection with the visual, I feel myself." Wantenaar also found her first time at the conservatoire not the easiest. ,,I felt somewhere that I was not 'allowed' to write the music I wanted, while my teachers did encourage me to do so. What worked for me was to immerse myself in what touches me, find out how that works and develop more and more skills that way. You don't lose your uniqueness anyway: a person is unique by definition." Artaç: ,,That's also what I tell my students: finding your voice takes time and is allowed to take time. My teacher at the time, Peter Jan Wagemans, opened a door for me that I didn't even know existed. Just by pointing out to me the possibility that I didn't have to push my passion for the visual aspect away, but could also embrace it. Oh, okay, is that an option too? When you're young, someone has to tell you things like that." Wantenaar still sees many fellow students. ,,We organise evenings, visit each other's concerts and discuss each other's music. You just have to keep asking yourself whether your criticism is constructive, substantive and therefore useful." Artaç: ,,And if you really don't like a piece? Can you be friends with someone whose music you dislike? I don't know. It might be far too personal for that." Heart Artaç has embraced the ability to be so personal in her work as an "enormous luxury", she says - perhaps precisely because she regularly travels back and forth between the Netherlands and Turkey. ,,That our completely freely conceived music can originate here and that there is also an enthusiastic, loyal and interested audience for it, is a great thing. After all, you write music to communicate with it." Wantenaar: ,,Yes, to touch people with your music. But I do see that separately from my background. My opera for instance, free after Toon Tellegen, tells a story of loneliness and friendship; universal themes. That story touched me, allowing me to compose it from my heart, with the hope that my music can touch someone else again." The National Opera bills Wantenaar as composer of opera. Without a female 'e' at the end. Wantenaar: "What does it matter that I am female? I write notes." Artaç: "But when I studied composition, I was the only woman among 20 students. Now the ratio is 50-50 and there are many more female teachers. I think that's a good thing. Male composers have dominated the picture for centuries. What if there had been a genius female Mozart? Perhaps music history would have taken a different course. We will never know." Wantenaar: "But I'm not a sociologist or a politician, am I? For my profession, composing music, I think my gender is of no importance. It seems very undesirable to me if the impression is given that there are two categories: composers and female composers." Mischa Spel, NRC Handelsblad, 5 March 2020
TROUW: Composer Mathilde Wantenaar (25) wants to compose from truth and love She assumed after her conservatory days that no one was waiting for her music, but 25-year-old Mathilde Wantenaar is already receiving one major composition commission after another. 'My hope and my commitment is to transcend my limited self in what I write.' Twenty-five years young, and fully in the saddle. After her studies, quietly taking a look at the big bad world was out of the question for Mathilde Wantenaar; the Amsterdam-based composer's diary filled up fluently with one commission after another. 'Dit zijn de bleeke, bleeklichte weken': voices traced the words of Herman Gorter, entering a fragile, lyrical sound universe. The singers of the Groot Omroepkoor premiered Wantenaar' s latest composition of the same name at the Saturday Matinee at the Concertgebouw last weekend. I draw from myself when I compose. My hope and my commitment is to transcend my limited self in what I write, otherwise it is just a page from my diary," says Wantenaar. I want to share a feeling that is universal, in which people can recognise themselves. Creating something from yourself should not be confused with self-expression. People are not waiting for me, but for a universal value that carries quality. Whether I can do all that, I don't know, but I try again with every piece." Matinee Wantenaar graduated with Willem Jeths and Wim Henderickx at the Amsterdam Conservatory of Music in 2016. Apart from writing notes, she is also proficient on the cello and plays the piano. She didn't have a moment to catch her breath after the exam, the Matinee knocked on the door with a composition request. The ball kept rolling, bodies of repute asked her for a piece. The vocal studies she started after her Bachelor of Composition are on the back burner, but she is persevering. I want to be involved with music in as many ways as possible. Making music myself is crucial, knowing how it feels to perform music. What am I doing to the musicians, there on that stage? I love the lilting, the voice, the lyrical. And also the lightness in French music, and simplicity, I got that from my father who is a jazz musician." Attention The premiere at the Saturday Matinee of Wantenaar's newcomer was well received. Emails, audience reactions, all week long the composer has been on a cloud. The attention I get afterwards is fantastic, so many fine and positive reactions to my piece. At the same time, it flies at me. The outside world demands a lot of energy, I prefer to crawl into my shell, I like being on my own and having enough time to write music. When I compose, I disappear from the radar and can fall silent for my friends for six months. I don't have a smartphone; I find the constant messaging from outside difficult to cope with. I am also a perfectionist, which is a strength and a pitfall at the same time. Basically, I want to do everything accurately and well. But really everything: making a sandwich takes me a long time, cleaning up, everything. I have no speed and cannot act on the fly. My sense of responsibility is enormous. You need that in this profession too. Composing is a precision job, you have to think about every accent, everything has to be worked out perfectly." The National Opera has commissioned a family opera from her Mathilde Wantenaar will have to get used to the hustle and bustle. Immediately after the Matinees success, rehearsals started with Amsterdam Sinfonietta: the string ensemble will perform her 'Night Music'. She is also working on a commissioned composition for the Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra to be performed in the autumn, and De Nationale Opera has commissioned a family opera from her: 'A song for the moon', based on a book by Toon Tellegen. When I entered the conservatoire, I thought there would be no place for what I want to write. I feared, wrongly, as it turned out, that the modernist atmosphere, music that you cannot easily imitate, that does not feel harmonic at its base, would dominate contemporary musical life. I had my heart set on Debussy and Bach, which I love. My music was and is seen by some as old-fashioned and anachronistic. Sound colour I write from what I like. I am interested in the different techniques I can use to achieve the timbre I have in my head. Whether my technique and the outcome are modernist or old-fashioned is of no interest to me." Wantenaar 's perfectionism also manifests itself during the conversation. No idea comes off as empty; she questions every thought. I make it very difficult for myself, yes, right. I find every word tricky, everything is more nuanced than you would initially think. Even when it comes to music. Relevant, topical, innovative: I find these complicated words to apply to art and therefore also to music. I write down what I myself as a musician would like to have in front of me to perform. I have the confidence that if I write something I am convinced of with integrity, it will be worth performing. Basis The foundation on which I want to base my life is something I think about a lot. For me, beauty, truth, goodness and love form the basis from which I want to act. Also when I write music. But I'm not a saint, mind you. I don't walk around permanently with a great sense of love for the outside world. I can go totally berserk and become furious at everything and everyone around me. That poem by Gorter, 'Dit zijn de bleeke, bleeklichte weken' (These are the pale, pale weeks), was written for me. I wouldn't want to miss life, but I don't just find it easy either. I don't expect there to come a point in my life where I am perfectly happy and then will remain so forever. If you look for a good way to be in life, you look for a good way to deal with the moments when you don't feel happy. That starts, I think, with acknowledging that those moments are allowed to be there, and that there is nothing wrong with you then. During my conservatoire studies, I went through a difficult period. I was lost, scared, insecure. I think I've landed a bit now." Frederike Berntsen, Trouw, 30 March 2019
DE VOLKSKRANT: A piece of music playable by amateurs yet challenging for a soloist. It didn't exist yet. Now it does. Merel Vercammen (28) plays enchanting violin, improvises in classical and jazz, has a master's degree in music cognition and is overflowing with ideas. With her performance on music and the brain, The New Mozart Effect, she links intelligence to music. And now she has discovered a gap in the violin repertoire. On Saturday, she will premiere in Alkmaar a composition she had specially written for amateur orchestra and a professional violin soloist. There was no such combination yet. The composer of the new piece, Mathilde Wantenaar (23), has just graduated as a star pupil of former composer of the Netherlands Willem Jeths. Both are young - the amateur musicians of the Alkmaar Symphony Orchestra are the age of their parents. How did you come up with the idea for this new composition? Vercammen: 'When you start out as a violinist, it's mostly amateur orchestras that invite you. If you talk to a conductor about what you want to play, you quickly end up with Tchaikovsky or Brahms, concerts meant for a large symphony orchestra. Amateur orchestras are smaller, forty or so. There is also repertoire for that, but a piece that is playable for an amateur orchestra and also challenging for a soloist - that didn't exist yet.' What problems does playing with an amateur orchestra pose? Vercammen: 'If there is a fast run, with lots of high notes, they sometimes leave out half of those notes or they play it an octave lower. That's fine, but it doesn't enhance the musicians' enjoyment of playing if the pieces are too difficult. The great thing about amateurs is that they are so enthusiastic. I want to increase both pleasure and quality, using the specific characteristics of an amateur orchestra. If a group of strings of the Concertgebouw Orchestra plays a tremolo, it gives a homogeneous sound.They all do exactly the same thing, with perfect technique. Here it sounds rawer, and Mathilde uses that very thing as a sound effect. In pop music, you see that rawness too - music is more than just beautiful.' Wantenaar: 'My starting point is the amateur orchestra and the musicians' pleasure in playing. That's what I mainly focused on. The piece starts with pizzicato notes that are played quickly. I want to achieve a sound effect with that, but it must also be easy to play. So the strings are allowed to play all the strings.' Vercammen: 'People often look at classical music as a kind of heritage. A contemporary composition can actually reflect the present.' Wantenaar: 'In this day and age, we can hear any music imaginable at the press of a button. The Icelandic singer Björk influenced by classical music, classical musicians creating their own pieces. For me as a composer, all these influences resonate in my pieces. Also pop and world music.' Vercammen: 'You also wrote that octet for Liza Ferschtman, which is much more atonal than this new piece. Do you feel embarrassed about tonality then?' Wantenaar: 'That's true. In this piece, the strings play a beautiful melody and then a harp joins in. It feels like a guilty pleasure. Then I think: am I allowed to write that? But of course, anything goes, but not everything is good. You do have to be tasteful.' Does today's ultimate freedom make composing more difficult? Isn't it as if a cop from the taste police is permanently watching? Wantenaar: 'I think about that a lot, also because of the problems it causes me. It sometimes feels lonely. We all sit on our own little islands writing our pieces, without a common language, without a common goal to pursue or, on the contrary, to oppose. Anything goes. That is beautiful on the one hand, but also difficult. It inspires me when I empathise with the musician who will soon breathe life into my notes'. How did the orchestra members view playing a new, unfamiliar piece? Vercammen: 'Classical music is very much alive among the people in this orchestra. When we polled the musicians a year ago, we were told: I like the idea, but it can only contain one page of squeak-toot-squeak. I thought that was a shame. Those preconceptions about contemporary music are based on the atonal period of the past, when the boundaries of what music is were pushed. Those days are far behind us. Fortunately, by now the scepticism among orchestra members has completely gone. Look at their enthusiasm now. It's heartwarming.' Biëlla Lutmer, De Volkskrant, 18 May 2017
EW: 'Bach is supreme'. Becoming a composer is not the most obvious career choice. Yet that became the profession of both Mathilde Wantenaar (30) and Joep Beving (47), even though they followed completely different paths to do so. Wantenaar went straight for her goal, Beving took quite a few side roads. But they became composers - with ups and downs. Wantenaar's composition Rhapsody for piano and strings premiered in April and was very well received. She wanted to create a playful, lively and joyful piece and was particularly inspired by Johann Sebastian Bach's fast-paced Fifth Brandenburg Concerto. She calls him important for her work. 'There is perfection in his music. Heart and head come together: that combination of the technical and the emotional, that's what I find so inspiring about him.' In fact,Wantenaar doesn't know any better if she was composing. She grew up in an artistic and musical family and took piano lessons when she was nine. Later, she played violin and cello. 'Composing I have been doing since childhood, it was something very natural to me that I didn't really think about. I did it for myself and I enjoyed doing it. I would make up all kinds of pieces of music, have it all in my head how it should sound, and my father would write it down. When he had written it down, he would play it again and I would listen if it was as I wanted. I could remember that well, even then.' Wantenaar, blond hair in a bun, sits with her legs raised at the table on which her violin lies. She figured out in the fifth grade of grammar school that she loved composing. 'Then we participated with school in a competition for musicians of the Asko Schönberg Ensemble, really a super good and professional ensemble. My piece was also performed in the Small Hall of the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam. That was great, such a special experience. That's when I knew I wanted to be a composer.' She was one of five to be admitted to the composition course at the Amsterdam Conservatoire, and later took a major in singing. 'Singing is a core way of making music. I wanted to develop further as a musician and I did so through those singing lessons. Then, as a composer, you can better put yourself in the shoes of the musician you are writing for.' She considers opera the ultimate form in music. 'The opera, that's everything.' All the worse that her first opera, written for children, fell through at the last minute: the first coronalockdown. A huge disappointment. 'Five days before the premiere , the first lockdown went into effect. I was completely out of it, I had worked on it for so long. Then you're at the mercy of something you can't do anything about. And for me it also came totally out of the blue, because I'm pretty much living under a rock. Then I really fell into a deep valley and couldn't do anything at all for a few months.' Until oneday she was able to attend a performance of one of her pieces at the Concertgebouw as the only visitor. 'Then I felt how incredibly I had missed it. And that it was not at all surprising that I was deeply unhappy and found it very difficult to compose anymore. Because that lifeline of live music had been completely pinched. That's when I came back to life.' The children's opera A Song for the Moon was later performed again and was so successful that it was rerun and also performed in Brussels. 'A happy ending after a very deep valley.' Wantenaar often refers to the night in the titles of her compositions: apart from A song for the moon, she wrote Hier ist ja lauter Nacht, Prélude à une nuit Américaine, Nachtmuziek, Zomernacht, Volle maan. Those titles fit very well with her lyrical, enchanting compositions. She is now working on a commission: a four-minute piece for violin and piano, for the National Violin Competition. 'That should be performable by children of a certain age, preferably accompanied by a father or mother. Those are the guidelines. Then I sit down behind the piano and try something out, see what happens. Or I play something on the violin. I improvise and then I find a nice melody or a chord. Then I have a piece of material, a building block on which I can continue.' Four minutes for two instruments is simpler than the complicated structure of a symphony or an opera, with a full orchestra and soloists. 'And with opera, you also have the added dimension of drama. But the process is basically always the same: playing, searching, finding, analysing and building on it.' Liesbeth Wytzes, EW, 8 July 2023.
LEEUWARDER COURANT: The musical language of Tellegen. Due to corona and lockdown, the Opera Forward Festival in 2020 fell through. One year on, little has changed. That's why De Nationale Opera brings the fifth edition of the OFF online in its entirety, with a preview of Upload, the new film opera by Michel van der Aa, and the family performance Een Lied voor de Maan (6+) by Mathilde Wantenaar, on a text by Toon Tellegen. Wantenaar's second opera A song for the moon was cancelled in 2020 a few days before its premiere, as the lockdown kicked in. ''That was a shock, because I didn't follow the news that much,'' the composer says by phone. ,,I was totally absorbed in the rehearsals. Surely such a small opera, in a small cast, will go on? That's what I thought. But no. And then suddenly we were all sitting at home. It felt very unreal at first, because you put your heart and soul into it. You are also not at all concerned about whether or not it will continue, but first and foremost whether it will turn out well. It all only dawned on me later. At first I felt a strange relief, because I could hardly remember what it was like when you don't have to do anything anymore. A surreal holiday feeling. But on the night of the premiere, I got sadder and sadder and slowly realised more and more what kind of drama we have all gotten ourselves into." How have you fared over the past year? ,,Everyone thinks that composers now have all the time they need to develop ideas in peace and quiet, but it's not like that with me. On the one hand, even under normal circumstances my life is a kind of existence in quarantine, because that is the nature of composing, but things are really different now. You miss the moment when you get together with musicians and your piece comes to life. That makes it all rather unreal at the moment." Wantenaar is among the most appealing young composers of the moment and has no complaints about work right after completing her studies. , "I wouldn't have dared hope that things would go so well right away." She played herself into the limelight with The Hidden for string orchestra and then soon got to sink her teeth into an opera project for the Opera Forward Festival. That piece, personar, was so successful that she was commissioned by De Nationale Opera (DNO) to write a youth opera. "Through DNO, I was able to go to a workshop of the European Network of Opera Academies on creating operas for young audiences. It involved composers, directors, costume designers. Very instructive. I met the director Béatrice Lachaussée there, with whom I wanted to write a fairytale opera. Looking for a story, I thought of Toon Tellegen, because I find his language so beautiful and musical. Someone pointed me to A song for the moon and it was perfect. Music is central to it. It's about the power of music and that music can bring all animals together - it couldn't be better. I really wanted a text that was simple and poetic at the same time; no flowery, pompous words." Is composing a second opera more difficult than a first? ,,It was mainly different. My first one didn't really have a clear story. We also really started from scratch, so I didn't know how the text by screenwriter Rosita Wolkers was going to be. For A song for the moon I had Toon Tellegen's story as a starting point. So there is a form right away. They are really two completely different pieces. I really want to write another one. And another one. And another one." Leeuwarder Courant, 19 March 2021.