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For anyone who has followed composer Louis Andriessen's career, the most surprising thing about the opera Writing to Vermeer (1999) is the immediate sense of beauty it radiates. By way of comparison, take Rosa, his prior operatic collaboration with filmmaker Peter Greenaway: Aggressive rhythms and abrasively mixed tone colors are the source of that work's power, along with voices often placed in painfully high registers. These traits have marked much of Andriessen's work since the 1970s, when he began concocting his own brand of minimalism in the Netherlands. Could it be that the composer has moved toward Romanticism after rejecting it his entire career? Despite the newly melodic, ingratiating style, Writing to Vermeer is still no conventional opera. Its three characters are women who write letters to the painter Johannes Vermeer, who never appears himself. Vermeer's wife (soprano Susan Narucki), his mother-in-law (mezzo Susan Bickley), and his model Saskia (soprano Barbara Hannigan) each sing their letters (in English) to the artist, recounting domestic events and anticipating his return. (Saskia also sings a song borrowed from the Dutch composer Sweelinck in Scene 4, accompanied only by harpsichord, like an image straight out of a Vermeer painting.) Meanwhile, disruptions from the outside world -- this is 1672, the Dutch "Year of Disasters" -- threaten the tranquility of the characters' lives and the beauty of the music itself. No matter how appealing Andriessen's music is, it's hard not to wish Writing to Vermeer had gone "straight to DVD"; by all reports, the staging, augmented by Greenaway's film projections, would complicate the musical experience in interesting ways. Nevertheless, this recording features excellent performances by the three singers, with Reinbert de Leeuw leading the Schönberg Ensemble and Asko Ensemble, and offers convincing evidence that Andriessen's recent work is just as powerful as anything he's ever done -- even if it's often very beautiful, too. Scott Paulin
All Music Guide
One of the last operas produced in the twentieth century was Louis Andriessen's "Writing to Vermeer," premiered at the Netherlands Opera on December 1, 1999. It is a handsome production indeed, with libretto and gigantic film projection components by Peter Greenaway and bursts of electronic music contributed by Michel van der Aa. However, all things opera move slowly in the twenty first century, and it has taken a little over six years for Nonesuch to deliver the first recording of the work, Louis Andriessen: Writing to Vermeer. To be fair, this specific recording was not taken from the premiere performance, but from a revival given at Amsterdam in 2004; the U.S. premiere of "Writing to Vermeer" was presented at Lincoln Center in 2000.
Divided into six scenes, this opera depicts three women close to seventeenth century Dutch Master Johannes Vermeer writing letters to him from his household in Delft, as he is away in The Hague on business. Women writing letters, in addition to doing household chores, practicing music, and other mundane tasks constitute the imagery we most readily associate with Vermeer the painter, and it was this aspect of Vermeer's visual style that Greenaway and Andriessen sought to evoke in "Writing to Vermeer." Another hallmark of Vermeer's painting is a subtle lack of drama, and in "Writing to Vermeer" "drama" is supplied by way of the interruption of external events -- political assassinations, the invasion of Holland by French forces, and finally, the flooding of Delft as a measure to stall the French invasion, which literally washes all of the characters and action away. For Andriessen and Greenaway the parts dealing with domestic life, children and the daily activities of the good Dutch hausfrau are the key elements of this work. To the composer and librettist's chagrin, the external layer of events has dominated the discussion of "Writing to Vermeer" among critics and most audiences, with its unstated implication that if Vermeer had been there, he might have found a way to stave off these disasters, at least in his own household. This conflict of interpretation may not be resolved anytime soon.
No matter what the controversy, "Writing to Vermeer" was one of the most completely controlled multimedia environments presented on the opera stage until now, and a mere recording of the music hardly does it justice -- one can argue that even a good DVD couldn't truly capture the experience of seeing it live. The style and sound of Andriessen's music falls somewhere between de Materie and de Staat -- it is not as dense as the former nor as rhythmically intense as the latter, and some of the instrumental texture even approaches a kind of lyric romanticism, albeit stated within the locus of Andriessen's usual modal/bitonal hybrid. The electronic segments by Michel van der Aa are excellent -- he has a masterful control of the technique of moving sound collages through space. One wonders why Andriessen, who long ago made some expert forays into electronic music himself, decided to outsource these segments, but it is undoubtedly for the better. The set comes with a 58-page-book containing the libretto, which one will want, as even though "Writing to Vermeer" is sung in English, that does not guarantee that all of its text is clearly comprehensible, even though the quality of the recording is outstanding. "Writing to Vermeer" is such a rich and complex work, chances are the listener will not "get it" on the first hearing, and it gets off to a slow start. Repeated listening, and time taken to concentrate fully on "Writing to Vermeer," will reveal its many virtues. Uncle Dave Lewis
New York Times
Mr. Andriessen's musical treatment of the clashing elements is so arresting that this potentially passive opera becomes grippingly dramatic.... The three main roles are distinctively conceived and, on the Nonesuch recording, beautifully performed.... An altogether mesmerizing work. Anthony Tommasini
Gramophone
Altogether absorbing, with commendable performances all round. Barry Witherden
Time Out New York
As usual, Nonesuch has gone out of its way to make this recording a striking sonic document thanks to the excellent performances. Daniel Felsenfeld
Los Angeles Times
On the surface, "Vermeer," which the Netherlands Opera premiered in 1999, is one of Andriessen's least threatening, least in-your-face scores. At its heart is a deep, deep lyricism. Echoes of early Dutch music run through it. It opens in gorgeous grace. Mark Swed
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