contents
1. summary
2. listen
3. programme notes
4. details
5. performances
summary
bron (2023) is a new orchestral work by Rozalie Hirs, commissioned by the NTR Zaterdagmatinee and Stichting Vrienden van de Matinee. bron (2023) is dedicated to the memory of György Ligeti.
Its world premiere took place during the NTR Zaterdagmatinee at the Concertgebouw, Amsterdam, on 16 December 2023. The work was performed by the Netherlands Radio Philharmonic Orchestra under the baton of Elena Schwarz (conductor). The concert was broadcast live on NPO Radio 4. There is a permanent listening link to the live world premiere concert (bron starts at 17′ into the broadcast). The work is featured on Hirs’ forthcoming portrait album Rosehart (2025).
listen
Listening link to follow soon
programme notes
With bron (“source” or “spring”), Hirs returns — in her words — “to the source of my composing: the love for sound.” The piece unfolds as an unbroken chain of swelling and receding sonorities, a breath-like rhythm suggestive of tides and waves. Winds often lead, their timbres rising and expanding, while strings surge over them like breakers, then subside into stillness, only for the cycle to begin anew.
Reviewer Joep Stapel (NRC) described the surface of this “acoustic surf” as iridescent, its colours shifting through finely woven textures. Within the overarching pulse of hypnotic repetition unfolds constant detail: dense harmonic clouds, bright punctuation from tubular bells, the deep resonance of timpani. Midway, descending string glissandi mark the close of the first half; the second half brings sharper contrasts and more tightly etched crescendos, ending in rising glissandi that resolve into a luminous final chord.
Ring modulation underpins the harmonic design, though here frequencies are approximated and notated in semitones. The emphasis centres on resonance within the acoustic orchestra. By using modulation to generate unexpected progressions, bron explores new terrain where spectral techniques and extended tonal harmony converge. It marks a significant moment in Hirs’ compositional journey.
For Hirs, music begins — and ends — with perception. She asks: why is something beautiful? Why does one sound move us more than another? Such questions lead her back to the physics of sound: how tones combine, what frequencies they contain, how they reinforce one another. Her background in chemical engineering sharpens this investigative drive, but her ear always remains the ultimate authority. Guided by simplicity — a principle shared with her mentors Louis Andriessen and Tristan Murail — her materials are “stripped to the bone, reduced to the essential,” with ornamentation serving a structural role. In bron, this aesthetic shapes a meditation on how sound continually comes into being, entering consciousness like the renewal of feeling and thought.
Here, the “source” is twofold: the source of sound itself — its arising, travel, and renewal in perception — and the inner source of inspiration, where ideas are born. In bron, this cycle is given sonic form: a source continually replenished, passed from composer to performer to listener in an unending exchange.
details
commission
bron (2023) was commissioned by NTR Zaterdagmatinee with support from the Vrienden van de NTR Zaterdagmatinee.
dedication
bron (2023) is dedicated to the memory of György Ligeti.
instrumentation
bron (2023) is scored for symphony orchestra: 4 flutes, 4 oboes, 4 clarinets, 4 bassoons, 5 horns, 3 trumpets, 3 trombones, tuba, timpani, 3 percussionists (crotales, tubular bells, vibraphone, medium and large gong, tamtam), celesta, piano, 2 harps, string orchestra (14 first violins, 14 second violins, 10 violas, 10 violoncellos, 8 double basses).
duration
14′ ca.
publisher
The score of avatar (2022) can be purchased through its publisher Deuss Music.
performances
16 December 2023, 14:15 CET, NTR Zaterdagmatinee, Concertgebouw, Amsterdam, The Netherlands – Elena Schwarz (conductor), Netherlands Radio Philharmonic Orchestra – wereldpremière