Donemus Webshop — Porcelijn, David

David Porcelijn is a conductor and composer. He was born on January 7, 1947 in Achtkarspelen (Friesland). He studied flute at the Royal Conservatory in The Hague with Frans Vester and composition with Kees van Baaren and Jan van Vlijmen.
Porcelijn founded Ensemble M together with Ton Hartsuiker. He was also conductor of the Radio Wind Ensemble. In 1970 he received the Prize for Composition from the Royal Conservatory in The Hague.
David Porcelijn was deputy director and teacher majoring in orchestral conducting, theory and performance practice of 17th and 18th century music at the Rotterdam Conservatory. He became assistant conductor to Michel Tabachnik in Geneva.
As a conductor he was active abroad for most of his career, including chief conductorships at the Adelaide Symphony Orchestra, the Tasmanian Symphony Orchestra, conducting at the Australian Opera in Sydney and chief conductor of the Sønderjyllands Symfoniorkester in Denmark & many invitations as guest director.
In the Netherlands he was musical director and conductor of the Nederlands Dans Theater. Porcelijn made many CD recordings, mainly of Dutch composers, such as Rӧntgen, van Gilse, Hendrik Andriessen & Badings and a lot of contemporary music.
In 1992 he was named The Best Opera Conductor at the Munich Biennale.
In 1994 he won an ABC Classic FM Australian Recording of the Year Award for a recording of Messiaen's 'Éclairs sur l'Au-délà' with the Sydney Symphony Orchestra.
With his 'Symphonic Requiem' from 1986 for orchestra, dedicated to Mozart, Berlioz, Brahms, Verdi and Britten, he breaks with his previous compositions in the style of serialism and calls it his opus 1.
De Volkskrant wrote: "Porcelijn's new style is mainly characterized by alternating tonal melody fragments with massive orchestral outbursts. Beautifully instrumented passages are contrasted with less successful attempts at a kind of Klangfarben melody, and in addition to diffuse chord blocks, many triads are incorporated, because that is allowed after all again. Hooray.”
Porcelijn composed his last work in 1985/86: Sinfonia concertante “The Seven" for Viola solo, Double bass solo, String Quintet and Large Orchestra opus. 2.