Calefax, established 25 years ago, are now in great demand worldwide, not least because of their unique instrumentation. The quintet performs standing up and always introduces itself and the programme to the audience. Most importantly, the five musicians arrange, recompose and interpret music from eight centuries to suit their unique constellation: from early music to classical and jazz to world premières; in the hands of Calefax it all sounds fresh and new. This cd was recorded to celebrate the 25th anniversary of Calefax. Calefax invited seven musical friends to perform and record a set of pieces that mirror the repertoire that Calefax has developed over the past quarter of a century. On this recording you hear a variety of reed instruments, including the rare contrabass clarinet an contraforte. Wondering what would be a fitting way to celebrate our twenty-fifth anniversary, we soon came up with the idea to give ourselves and the audience a present: a project unique in size and labour intensiveness. And here it is: 140% extra Calefax, for the same price! Our memories went back to November 1995, when, shortly after our graduation, we celebrated our tenth anniversary together with our former teachers. All of them are renowned players who, as soloists or prominent musicians in the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, have contributed to the highly respected international reputation of Dutch woodwind culture. Fifteen years, hundreds of concerts and many international tours have passed since, and all over the world reed quintets shoot up like mushrooms. The group of players we have now invited consists of highly esteemed colleagues who, like us, are mainly active in the field of chamber music. The repertoire we were performing at the time has been developed into a full evening’s programme. And what a treat this project was! Composer Giel Vleggaar agreed, stating: “The reed orchestra is a remarkably beautiful biotope, an orchestral group which has been divorced from its context, producing sound colours with honey-sweet blends. At the same time, its low instruments do provide the full growling bottom which my music needs. To me, writing music for CalefaXL was a wonderful excursion with a surprising result – this orchestra produces a truly unique sound.” The ensemble may sound like an orchestra, but in its ensemble play it actually feels just like... Calefax! It all began with the seemingly mad idea to play symphonic repertoire with twelve reed players. We chose Maurice Ravel’s La valse, a ‘poème chorégraphique’. In this piece, Ravel paints a picture of a festive imperial court in the Vienna of 1855. Using majestic ‘camera work’, Ravel leads us from the clouds to the ballroom, where we can observe dancing couples making their inevitable turns. Amidst all these dreamlike celebrations, the beautifully glittering chandeliers and rustling ballroom dresses, emotions are running high. Too high even; the music gradually becomes more intense, and then suddenly holds. Again the pace increases; musical themes and motives are competing for attention, all jumbled up. It appears that behind all pomp and circumstance is hidden a macabre undercurrent: the social pressure to wear the right clothes, make turns and have the right names written in the dance card. An inevitable and inhumanly accelerating dance step ends what has become a nightmare. Sergei Diaghilev had commissioned the work, which was conceived as a ballet, but refused to set a ballet to it. He called the piece “not a ballet, but a portrait of ballet”. Ravel was insulted and did not want anything more to do with Diaghilev ever. Calefax’s oboist and arranger Oliver Boekhoorn is also a part time photographer and sound technician. Many beautiful recordings have come into existence thanks to his skills, and two CD’s; Libro de Glosas (2009) and The Musicfactory (2010). The first of these two CD’s was made for a tour to Japan, where we originally intended to play Oliver’s much played arrangement of Richard Strauss’s symphonic poem Till Eulenspiegels lustige Streiche. The piece was dropped for both the tour and the CD, but we still had the recording and thought it a good idea to add it for this occasion. The story is about the rascal Eulenspiegel, who plays several nasty and boisterous tricks and is eventually arrested, taken to court and hung. After the narrator´s moralistic epilogue, the audience hears a last cheer from the scoundrel, as if from the grave. Jelte Althuis arranged one of the most famous pieces for organ by Johann Sebastian Bach: Passacaglia and Fugue, BWV 582. In this piece, a passacaglia – a variation form on a repeated bass theme – is tied in a masterly manner to a double fugue of which both themes are based on the passacaglia theme. Bach was in his early twenties when he wrote this piece. He had just been on a long trip by foot to Lübeck in order to hear the then highly reputed organ player and composer Dieterich Buxtehude (approx. 1637-1707) play. Instead of the four weeks leave his employer in Arnstadt allowed him, Bach stayed in Lübeck for four months. The Passacaglia and Fugue clearly shows the influence of Buxtehude’s work. Boekhoorn also made a new arrangement of Richard Wagner’s Isoldes Liebestod, the climax from his opera Tristan und Isolde. In this fragment, Isolde is inconsolable because of the death of her beloved Tristan and she takes her own life. With its full chords and abundant use of the entire XL ensemble, this arrangement may also be considered a declaration of love to the full reed ensemble. Of course, we had to commission a good new piece for this anniversary project – an assignment just right for Giel Vleggaar, whom we had spotted some time ago. Giel Vleggaar about his composition: “Since we spoke about working together a while ago, I had been thinking of the title Pretty Beautiful for some time already. Partly, it suited my opinion that Calefax plays beautifully as a quintet; partly it just seemed an exciting title to me to which I would love to write a piece. It is in some way appealing to observe the world in Technicolor, a way of recording film which results in very characteristic colours on the screen. Films in Technicolor seem timelessly beautiful and polished with soft saturated colours. This super beauteousness manifests itself in Pretty Beautiful in sensual harmonic ideas and shrouded melodies, which could have stemmed right from Duke Ellington. Having listened the entire Summer to Squarepusher, I added a solid drive to it – but that is something I just cannot help doing.” In 1995 a new work was composed as well, namely by Ton ter Doest, composer of several very successful Calefax pieces. The group commissioned The Fax Process: “Thinking of Calefax, I cannot help hearing the rattling of a fax machine. The motorial dance I have composed can be lead back to the mechanical sound of a fax machine”. As in all his music, Ter Doest succeeds in exploiting the full sound of the ensemble. Steve Reich’s New York Counterpoint (from the first year of Calefax’s existence, 1985) was originally composed for clarinet and tape, on which ten prerecorded (bass) clarinets. This piece has been played by us in several versions, of which the version for clarinet solo, four accompanying and six recorded instruments has been performed many times in several countries. After having heard the recording of our first rehearsal, Reich wrote to us: “I am pleased to say you have my permission to use your arrangement of New York Counterpoint and perform it wherever you like. I must add that your musicians all sound first rate.” New York Counterpoint is a classic example of so called ‘minimal music’. The piece is some sort of concerto for clarinet and ensemble. From approximately 1’35’’ in the first movement, the clarinet takes the lead by ‘demonstrating’ musical fragments, which are subsequently taken over by the other instruments. This results in a hallucinating and complex pattern.