With Aile Asszonyi (Soprano). Conducted by David Porcelijn with the Netherlands Symphony Orchestra.
I. Langsam - 00:00
II. Leidenschaftlich und heftig bewegt - 8:48
III. Sehr langsam und schwermutig - 20:46
IV. Lebhaft und sehr kraftig, stellenweise im Ausdruck eines ubermutigen Walzer - 30:27
V. Ausserst langsam und sehr ruhig, mit innigster Empfindung - 41:13
Jan Pieter Hendrik van Gilse was a Dutch composer and conductor. Among his works are five symphonies and the Dutch-language opera Thijl.
Van Gilse's early style is indebted to German late romanticism. After about 1920, however, it becomes more modernist. His opera Thijl (1940), often regarded as his masterpiece and arguably the most important opera in Dutch musical history, is one of his last works and a totally individual conception. An attempt by the German occupiers to destroy all of van Gilse's work was prevented by his collaborators.
"Van Gilse was not at all a musical innovator but stood firmly on the foundations of tonal late romanticism and wrote music of dazzling beauty. This is ecstatic, romantic, and beautiful orchestral music with pathos, drama, and passion. After he had completed his studies with Humperdinck at the Academic Master School in 1905, van Gilse moved from Berlin to Bremen in order to begin his career as a conductor and répétiteur at the local theater. Presumably inspired by Richard Wagner's operas, which were performed many times at the Bremen Theater, in May 1906 he began composing his third symphony as a work of large scope with soprano solos from the Song of Songs in its third and fifth movements. In 1907 he completed the symphony, which was entitled »Erhebung.« The premiere of his Symphony No. 3 was held in Munich on 2 June 1908 during the forty-fourth festival of the Allgemeiner Deutscher Musikverein. Its Dutch first performance was then held in Amsterdam on 4 March 1909. It was not Willem Mengelberg but Jan van Gilse himself who conducted the Concertgebouw Orchestra. Unfortunately, during van Gilse's lifetime his third symphony was performed a total of merely seven times." -CPO.
