Escher:
Trio d’anches
Sonata per violoncello solo (1948)
Sinfonia per dieci strumenti (1973-1975)
Passacaglia for organ (1937, rev.1946)
Le tombeau de Ravel, for flute, oboe, violin, viola, violoncello and harpsichord (1952, rev.1959)
Quintetto a fiati (1966/67)
Trio for clarinet, viola and piano (1979)

In what would, sadly, turn out as the final two editions (2021 and 2022) of the Orlando Festival in the province of Limburg in The Netherlands, Rudolf Escher was celebrated with performances of his complete chamber music, including most of his solo works. All performances were live recorded for broadcasting by Dutch national radio. Eight essential compositions, covering a period of 42 years of Escher’s output, were selected for these two compact discs. The young, multi-talented Rudolf Escher contemplated becoming either a visual artist, a writer and poet, or a musician. Ultimately, he studied piano and composition (with Willem Pijper) at the Rotterdam Conservatoire from 1934 until 1937. The compositions from his early period were almost all destroyed in the bombing of Rotterdam in May 1940. He continued composing in the war years, and since the first performance in 1947 of his orchestral work Musique pour l’esprit en deuil he was recognized as an important composer. Escher also worked as a music journalist for a weekly magazine, and published poetry in the 40’s and 50’s. He taught at the Amsterdam Conservatoire from 1960-1961 and was a lecturer at Utrecht University from 1964 until his retirement in 1977. During his lifetime his works were performed regularly by Dutch orchestras, particularly by the Concertgebouw Orchestra, which played all of his orchestral works, with an average of three different Escher compositions spread across ten programs per year, led by conductors Eduard van Beinum, Willem van Otterloo, Eduard Flipse, Bernhard Haitink, Ernest Bour, Hans Vonk and Reinbert de Leeuw. Escher composed most of his chamber music for specific excellent musicians and ensembles, such as Alma Musica, the Danzi Quintet, the Phemios Trio, cellist Carel van Leeuwen Boomkamp, flutist Frans Vester and clarinetist Sjef Douwes. Reacting to the repeated remark by music journalists that his music was influenced by Ravel and Debussy, Escher stated that this ‘comes close to stupidity, also because the music of Debussy and Ravel represents separate musical worlds’. He felt that his affinity with the toccata-technique of Sweelinck, melismatic Gregorian chant, gamelan music, late-medieval polyphony and with Mahler was as strong as with certain aspects of Debussy or Ravel. Despite that fact that Rudolf Escher is generally being described by musicologists and music journalists as the most interesting and most important composer of his generation, performances of his music have become rather scarce in The Netherlands in the four decades since his death. The performance archive of the Concertgebouw Orchestra shows the decline: 24 performances of eight compositions in the 1980’s, followed by nine performances in the 1990’s and nine performances (of only two works total) in the 23 years of the 21st century. Hopefully the performances at the Orlando Festival as captured on these compact discs will encourage and inspire listeners and performers to explore and enjoy the beautiful music of Rudolf Escher.