As I mentionned yesterday the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra is strong in both classical, romantic and contemperory music. Since my passion is with the latter, I would like to share an experience I had with a wonderful concerta October 10th. In the tradition of innovation, the orchestra invited Gubaidulina to write a new piece. She is working on that, but she wasn't able to finish it in time. Because of that, an older work of her was played: the rider on the white horse (2002) for orchestra and organ.

This was an experience I will not lightly forget. This is music that makes your spine shiver and gets into your soul. Gubaidolina is a master in evoking an apocalyptic atmosphere.

And it made me wander about a narrative that is very strong in western society: the narrative of 'the end of times'. The story is so appealing, that it is - so to speak - always 'sucking in' events that it can use to rebuild them into a forecast of the end of times. In the middle ages the flaggelants were preparing for the youngest day. In the seventeenth century in Eise Eisinga in Franeker build a planetarium to prove that the world would NOT dissappeare because of a conjunction of several planets. I personally feared very strong in the eightees the end of the world through a nuclear disaster. At the moment the story is all about the end of the world through climate change.

I certainly do not want to advocate that we need not be affraid of the latter (The fact that the nuclear clash didn't happen (yet) is no prove that 'end of time predictions' are wrong, it could have happenned). But it is good to know that there is a deep human need to be affraid of the end of times. This fear is strong in organisations as well, one of the reasons of the success of using 'The future backwards'.

And Gubaidulina transformed that in a wonderful, religeous musical experience. This is an end I can advise everyone to enjoy.