Dazzling Works: Contemporary music from the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra

“Theo Verbeij’s LIED for trombone and orchestra seems, in fact, to be a succession of four ‘songs’ in which the soloist Jörgen van Rijen, the orchestra’s principal trombone player and the composer’s fellow Dutchman, makes his instrument sing with an overall gentleness and expressiveness that denies any popular impression of its bombast personality. Verbeij, who was born in 1959, handles the orchestra with deftness. In the last ‘song’ there is no doubt a touch of Stravinsky behind the agile trombone.”