The Amsterdam Orchestra (Het Orkest Amsterdam) performs in Bratislava!
Program:
Dmitri Schostakowitsch
Sinfonie Nr. 5 in d-Moll, op. 47
About the orchestra
The Amsterdam Orchestra (Het Orkest Amsterdam) is a symphony orchestra full of passionate and advanced amateur musicians. The Orchestra rehearses every Tuesday evening in Amsterdam and performs three surprising concert programs per year, with concerts in Amsterdam, Utrecht, Hilversum and Haarlem, among others. We then play in famous concert venues in the Netherlands such as De Duif, Dominicuskerk, Paradiso, MCO, the Philharmonie Haarlem or in the Concertgebouw. The Orchestra has played many major symphonic works by Mahler, Strauss, Beethoven, Brahms, Berlioz, Debussy, Sibelius, Tchaikovsky, Shostakovich and Prokofiev. Modern compositions by John Adams, Gavin Bryars, Einojuhani Rautavaara and Calliope Tsoupaki have also been on our desks.
The Orchestra played for 22 years under the guidance of the Russian conductor Alexander Vakoulsky. In the following years we played under conductors such as Jussi Jaatinen, Gustavo Gimeno and Joan Berkhemer. Jacob Slagter has been our permanent conductor since 2014. We are very happy that Jacob gives our orchestra a wonderful evening every Tuesday evening with his drive, inspiration and jokes and thus passes on his invaluable experience to us. In recent years, foreign tours have been made to China, the Czech Republic, Italy, France and Poland. The tours are always a combination of music, culture and a lot of fun. This year our orchestra tours to Austria and Slovakia, and our performance in Bratislava forms an absolute highlight for us!
About the conductor
Jacob Slagter (1958) was born in Friesland, the Netherlands. He proved to be musically skilled from an early age; his first horn consisted of a self-made garden hose. Jacob actually wanted to be a football player and a French horn player, but his father made him choose; he had more mouths to feed. His love for music and analyzing it started in his youth. While listening to classical works on LPs, Jacob devours the scores completely. He still ends the day with music by Johann Sebastian Bach. Jacob started his career as a horn player in the North Netherlands Orchestra and was appointed principal horn player of the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra in 1985. In 1987 he was awarded the Dutch Music Prize for his extraordinary musical achievements. Thanks to this successful period of more than 25 years, he has built up a wealth of knowledge and experience. He worked as a horn player under the world's greatest conductors, including Bernard Haitink, Leonard Bernstein and George Solti, and performed as a soloist with Bernard Haitink, Nikolaus Harnoncourt, Wolfgang Sawallisch and Riccardo Chailly.
Inspired by these examples, in addition to his position as a horn player, he increasingly focused on conducting and was asked to conduct, among others, the Holland Symfonia, the Gelders Orchestra and the North Netherlands Orchestra. From 2004 onwards, Jacob Slagter regularly assisted Mariss Jansons with the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra. In 2003, 2006 and 2009 he led the Entrée orchestra projects of Het Concertgebouw and KCO with great success. Since 2010, Jacob Slagter has conducted a special orchestral project in Brazil for a number of years during the summer period during the Festival Internacional de Música do Pará, Belém. Other orchestras that Jacob has conducted with great success are the Philharmonic in Antwerp, the Zeeuws Orchestra and the Residentie Orchestra. Jacob teaches at the Conservatory of Amsterdam: conducting and ensemble leadership.
