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Jan Kruit, who died in October 2018, was one of the most productive programme makers at the Concertzender. In July 2020, almost two years after his death, we broadcast the final programme that he had produced for the series Missa Etc.. However, this is not the end Missa Etc.. The programme makers Johan van Veen and Kees Koudstaal are taking over. In their own way, they will continue this series about religious music from Renaissance, Braroque and Classicial periods that Jan has left behind. Johan van Veen and Kees Koudstaal had also previously taken over Jan’s other series Roaming through the Classical period. The programmes have been renamed Roaming through the Middle Ages, Renaissance or Baroque, dependant on the period that is being featured in each programme and will continue to focus on the secular music from these periods. Missa etc.: from 4 August 2020 every Tuesday 18.00-19.00 CET Roaming through the Middle Ages / Renaissance / Baroque: every Saturday 10.00-11.00 CET

On Sunday 9 August at 16:00 CET we reach a milestone. You can then listen to the 100th programme in our series Organ works. One hundred programmes, each one different, but the starting point for every programme has remained the same: the sound of early music played on authentic organs. The series has featured unknown organs in Groningen, unknown organs in Northern Germany and the live concerts that the Concertzender recorded during the organ festival Schnitger Meets in August 2019. The series has introduced the listener to many impressive but previously unknown organs. Much of the music that has been played on these organs was also frequently less well-known.

This month the composer of the month comes from Paris. Although Claude Debussy was born just west of that city, he spent most of his life there, a life that lasted from 1862 to 1918. Debussy died of colon cancer, while his beloved city was being shelled by German cannons. Die dicke bertha   Debussy is known today as one of the greatest innovators of the 19th century. However, in his early days, Debussy wrote many piano pieces to please the wealthy salon audience. These pieces were not overly experimental and perfectly playable for amateur musicians. That changed from the nineties, when Debussy increasingly used old composition techniques, whimsical shapes and both modal and other keys. His string quartet and liederen testify to this experimental approach. They are now established as standard repertoire, but at the time were considered radical and difficult to play, even for professional musicians. Our programmes this month focus especially on Debussy’s liederen, in which he made use of the freedom of the French language and revealed his preference for an almost spoken style of singing. Composer of the month is broadcast every week-day from 16:00 to 15:00 CET starting from Monday 3 August.

This month we are broadcasting part 17 in the series An Ox of the Roof by Thea Derks, a series inspired by her dutch book of the same title. The recent programme in the series have featured music by Dutch composers in order to provide them with some support in these difficult times. This month the programme includes a recording of the song cycle ‘The Open Road‘ by Kate Moore, the Australian-Dutch composer who won the Matthijs Vermeulen Award in 2017. The programme closes with a piece by the American-Dutch composer Vanessa Lann. Her composition ‘Is a Bell…. A Bell?’ for the Austrian pianist Isabel Ettenauer is unusual because it is written for two toy pianos. Compiled, edited and presented by Thea Derks Listen Sunday 2-8-2020 from 12:00 to 13:00 CET

The Heerenveen football club was founded. The socialists split and a new faction called themselves ‘communists’. The first aircraft took off from the Waalhaven airfield in Rotterdam. But what music was being composed exactly a century ago? We provide the answer to that question every month in our series The Last Century. 1920 was not one of the leanest years in music history. Think Pulcinella, by Igor Stravinsky. Dmitri Sjostakovitsj was only 14 years old but composed five preludes for piano and made his debut as composer. Maurice Ravel demonstrated the possibilities of a waltz in his ‘Poème choréographique pour orchestre’: La Valse. And Darius Milhaud put an ox on the roof in his ’Le boeuf sur le toît’.