I went to Rio on the 16th of May, after I was invited to perform at the 6th Rio Harp Festival. This international harp festival is an incomparable event. One month, 86 concerts, harpists from all over the world, with an audience of over 20.000 people. An entire month of harp, can you believe it?

It was my first time in Brazil and actually my first time in South-America. Coincidence doesn’t exist. On the plane to São Paolo I sat next to composer/musician Martin Fondse. And it got even more bizarre, because he told me that he had intended to use the flight to write the piece I commissioned…! No surprise he didn’t get to finish it, although he assured me afterwards on facebook that the 16 bars he wrote are in fact more than enough for an entire CD in jazz music: “A little more sanding and scraping, bringing it back to normal proportions and you got yourself a brand new piece Remy!”

In Rio I immediately felt very welcome by the team of the Rio Harp Festival, led by the director Sergio da Costa e Silva. In general, I have never met more friendly people than in this country. All of them were incredibly kind and helpful, always offering their support and assistance. The first couple of days were characterized by the two upcoming performances I was going to give. It was clouded, which allowed me to focus on the concerts and prepare myself to the fullest on what was to come.

I can not compare the concerts I gave in Rio with any other perfomance. There was an incredible vibe among the public, who came in large numbers. In fact there were so many people that we had to schedule in an extra concert to fit everyone. The next day the organization arranged a hall twice as big for the third concert, but then the audience had doubled too and we had to reprise the program again…! The Brazilian people genuinely love music. I believe they don’t care what it is: samba, rock, pop, jazz, harp, as long as it is convincing, right from the heart and with passion. And when these criteria are met, they are open to appreciate all that is given to them. Some people came to all four of my concerts; what a hunger for and devotion to music! The crowd was one of the warmest and most enthusiastic audiences I have ever seen and the concerts were among my best experiences on stage.

After the concerts I had scheduled in some extra days to be able to fully appreciate Rio and spend time with my new Brazilian friends. The sun came and temperatures rose. Naturally, I went to all the sights: from Cristo Redento, to the beautiful beaches of Ipanema and Copacabana, to a soccer match of Fluminensce. I went through the favelas and experienced great nights at the famous Lapa-area.

All in all it was a wonderful trip. Certainly the best country I have visited in my life and I sincerely hope to return to Rio and the festival next year!

Pieter Pryck has many years’ experience in the world of classical music and the performing arts. Educated as a professional flutist at the Royal Conservatory in The Hague in the ‘70’s, he was appointed co-creator and producer for the department of Classical Music at the AVRO in 1980, the foremost Broadcasting Service in The Netherlands for classical music.
During that time he was responsible for all projects with the radio orchestras and live broadcasts of the major national orchestras including the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra. He conceived and developed the format for the Sunday Morning Concert Series at the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam in 1995, which since that time has become the most important and certainly most successful concert series for classical music in the Netherlands.

From 1996-2005 he was manager of the Netherlands Symphony Orchestra, where he very successfully collaborated with Jaap van Zweden as principal conductor. The Netherlands Symphony Orchestra undertook several international tours to the UK, Spain and the United States of America with a special highlight performance at Carnegie Hall, New York.

For many years he was chairman of the Dutch Foundation for the Performing Arts in both the Music Committee and the Committee for Foreign Scholarships. He is music advisor to the Culture Board of The Dutch Local Government Bank (Bank Nederlandse Gemeenten).

Pieter Pryck has written several articles on classical music, was critic for many years and has been announcer at many classical concerts. As interim manager for artistic and business affairs, he worked with several Dutch orchestras including the Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra, the Amsterdam Baroque Orchestra & Choir Ton Koopman and recently with the Netherlands Radio Philharmonic Orchestra and the Netherlands Radio Chamber Philharmonic: both orchestras belong to the Music Centre of the Dutch Broadcasting Organizations (MCO) in Hilversum.
Pryck is a networker pur sang, with many and varied contacts and inputs in the rich network of the performing arts for classical music in The Netherlands and abroad.

In April I will go on holiday to charge up for a series of performances in Europe and South America, and the Summer of Music in August. Besides many concerts with ensembles and solo recitals in the Netherlands, I will go to Brazil in May to perform twice at the 6th International Harp Festival in Rio de Janeiro. In June I will play the harp concerto by C. Reinecke in Switzerland and later visit Catalonia in Spain for a recital and masterclasses.

I hope to meet some of you at these occasions. In any case I am looking forward to them all!

To me, the essence of music is the expressive capacity of a personal story. The power of a soloist who plays honestly and purely, without concessions or compromises, but with a large degree of risk-taking and daring, is what inspires and drives me in music. It is this uniqueness, this ‘creation’ of music, that is the core of my desire to perform.

For me, 2010 was a busy year with lots of new adventures. For the first couple of months of past year I was more of an organizer than a musician when we launched the first Dutch Harp Festival with a large group of musicians, students and partners. After this incredible, overwhelming week I started studying the French language before going back in my old routine of traveling all the corners of our country for many different concerts.

January 2011 continues in pretty much the same pace, with three great concerts in its three first days. Having not quite experienced much free time during christmas either due to the trio42 concert tour (apart from some great nights out to see Cirque du Soleil and the Tsjakovsky Perm Ballet) and with Noel Wan’s Dutch Harp Tour coming up, I will be struggling to keep you all posted. Fortunately, short messages are easily written, so keep up to date by following me on twitter or facebook, where I intend to leave and reply to messages whenever there is a spare moment.

The Dutch Harp Tour ’11 will be the upbeat for the new Dutch Harp Festival/Competition in 2012. Plans are being made as we speak and believe me: you don’t want to miss it! The compulsory program for the competition will be out on the 20th of January. For the rest, so far 2011 will bring lots of concerts, including some nice trips to London, Rome and Switzerland and off course the NJO Summer of Music.

Summing up, another full and great year. I hope to meet you all along the way!

Afgelopen zondag was Remy te gast in het VPRO televisieprogramma Vrije Geluiden. Hij bracht prachtig werk van Ryohei Hirose en Manuel de Falla ten gehore. U kunt de herhaling van de uitzending (met o.a. Claron McFadden samen met de Konrad Koselleck Big Band) aanstaande zaterdag 30 oktober om 9.00 uur op Nederland 1 bekijken.