DESCRIPTION:
All I have of this delightful and at time moving piece is a 50 years old record. I patched up the worse cracks, but you can still hear this recording wasn't made yesterday. However, the quality of the music stands and this is typically one of those pieces you like to hear over and over again.

Program note (by the composer)
The commission by the Council of Amsterdam to compose a "piece for orchestra of no more than double woodwinds, 2 horns, 2 trumpets and 2 percussionists" and lasting between "10 to 20 minutes" aroused my eagerness to write entertaining music of not too explicitely symphonic a character and which, at the same time, the listener would easily understand without any special effort. Yet "facile" does not mean that the end result is an easy piece for the performers, which it at certain moments definitely is not.
At first acqaintance this little piece gives the impression of being in two movements - 1: Introduction a, scherzo-trio-adagio-trio-scherzo and 2: Introduction b, Rondo (Finale) - but the two slow introductions (a and b) together form a perhaps unnoticed single presence, almost the presence of an "absent first movement", whereas the adagio section in the middle of the Scherzo seems to point at a "slow movement" which is however not further developed. The whole intention of this Divertimento has been to avoid real or suggested themes treated so "symphonically" that the specific character of a true "divertimento" would be violated. Yet, near the end the most prominent actors of this musical play form a contrapuntal union that creates after all a coherence between previously contrasting elements.



AUTHOR, PERFORMERS, CONDUCTOR, CONCERT HALL, RECORDING, BROADCASTING, PRESERVATION AND ARCHIVING WERE ALL FINANCED WITH PUBLIC MONEY