Willem Jeths - Glenz

Willem Jeths (1959)

Glenz : for violin solo and string orchestra (1993)

Peter Brunt, violin
Orchestra: Nieuw Sinfonietta Amsterdam
Conductor: Lev Markiz

dedicated to Peter Brunt, Lev Markiz en het Nieuw Sinfonietta Amsterdam


Willem Jeths is a Dutch composer. He studied music education at the Sweelinck Conservatory, Amsterdam (1980–1982), then composition at the Utrecht Conservatory (1982–1988), where his lecturers were Kox and subsequently Keuris. At the same time he studied musicology at the University of Amsterdam (1983–1991). He wrote a master’s thesis on Elisabeth Kuyper, the results of which were published, in collaboration with P. Lelieveldt, in Zes vrouwelijke componisten (ed. H. Metzelaar, Zutphen, 1991).
Jeths’s compositions, freely atonal in idiom, include orchestral works, chamber music and songs. In his own words, he strives ‘to indicate the skeleton, the essence of the music. I attempt to put this into effect in an unadorned style in which concentrated musical thought is combined with special attention to pure sound and ferocious rhythm’. His feeling for texture and sonority is evident in his violin concerto Glenz, in which a further nine soloists within the string orchestra, employing scordatura and a broad chromatic spectrum of harmonics, are played off against the solo violin.
His awards include the second public prize of the competition organized by BUMA (the Dutch agency for musical copyright) in 1993 (for Novelette), the honorary diploma of the Weber String Quartet Competition in 1991 (for Arcate), and the second prize at the International Vienna Competition in 1995 (for Glenz).