Julie Muller Max van Egmond BARITONE WITH AN APPENDIX “SOME REFLECTIONS ON SINGING” BY MAX VAN EGMOND ________________________________________ Preface In 1985 I translated this book from the Dutch and slightly modified it for a non-Dutch audience, explaining some of our weirder customs. I haven't changed anything, but have kept adding short updates and a second discography following the original one near the end of the book and just after Max van Egmond's 1984 appendix, which I have also translated. The debt I owe Max van Egmond himself and just about everybody mentioned should be obvious. Thanks again, dear friends and family. Julie Muller, Amsterdam, August 2016. ________________________________________ 1 ________________________________________ Contents The Casino, August 29, 1959 2 The Casino, September 1, 1980 4 Semarang, Dutch East Indies 25 Summer 1943 31 August 1945 35 1980 40 1946 55 Back to 1980 89 Turning Professional – The Sixties 124 The Nights before Christmas 153 Munich, 1964 164 1980-81 177 Passion Play 181 The Early Seventies 197 1981 208 A Busy Weekend 212 1975-1980 219 Baroque Performance Institute 227 Castle Hill 306 After 1984 345 Some Reflections on Singing 356 Bibliography to the Appendix 390 Photographs 392 Discography 1960 – 1984 I Discography after 1984 VI ________________________________________ 1 ________________________________________ ’s-Hertogenbosch, The Netherlands. The Casino, Saturday afternoon, August 29, 1959 The first day of the preliminaries for the sixth International Vocal Competition was about to begin. Twenty-nine basses and baritones were competing, seven of whom were Dutch. They were still anonymous to the Dutch members of the jury at this stage, all but Max van Egmond. His voice was familiar to every Dutch family with a radio: “This is the news” But Max was unknown to foreign jury members, he knew. To Julius Patzak, for example. There he was, sitting at his table in the front aisle. Aside from the jury the large hall was empty, barring a secretary or two. Not very inspiring. Still, Max tried to imagine he was just giving a recital. He wasn’t nervous, or so he said, because he had carefully refrained from listening to the other participants. He was trying to keep the competition atmosphere, the non- artistic element, out of sight and hearing. He didn’t want comparisons, he wanted to display his own specific gifts as fully as possible. He tried to imagine he was just giving a recital. The familiar accompanists, his schoolmates Jan Wijn and John van’t Hoff and Bach chorus pianist Thom Bollen had been replaced by the competition accompanist George van Renesse. Instead of being in one of the churches or halls of Het Gooi, where there were always friends and relations to exchange a glance with, here he was in this huge, overheated concert hall. ________________________________________ 2 ________________________________________ Max and five other basses and baritones reached the semi-finals. Out of one hundred and four participants, seventeen had come this far. But none of the Dutch competitors got to the finals, to the great disappointment of the press which admitted to the high standard of the singing. Two basses reached the finals and the first prize went to thirty-three year old Swiss Arthur Loosli. Not one of the tenors won anything, but the Dutch Music Society offered an award for great promise. The Toonkunst prize, five hundred guilders, went to Max van Egmond. Although it was not a first, it got him enough publicity to launch his career in The Netherlands. A local paper came out with a banner headline: TOONKUNST PRIZE FOR HILVERSUM’S MAX VAN EGMOND. He was showered with congratulations and, better yet, offers to perform. Now he would really give up being a sociology student and working for the radio news. All his doubts and hesitations were gone. He was going to be a singer. Max van Egmond was twenty-three. ________________________________________ 3 ________________________________________ ’s-Hertogenbosch, The Netherlands. The Casino, Monday afternoon, September 1, 1980 The third preliminary round of the twenty-seventh International Vocal Competition is about to begin. Among the basses and bari- tones, whose turn it is today, is Thomas Durer, who is not Dutch. Thomas graduated from a conservatory in his native country and then took a summer course. For three weeks he attended master classes given by the famous Dutch baritone Max van Egmond, who thought he showed promise. Thomas worked and saved up for a year and then came to Amsterdam where he studied with van Egmond at the Sweelinck Conservatory. Now Thomas wants to try his luck in ’s-Hertogenbosch. Max is on the jury but he is not allowed to judge his own students or even former ones. That is in the regulations. They used to have trouble with that in ‘s-Hertogenbosch. Thomas would like to have audited the competition before entering, as the public is welcome from the semi-finals on, but at this time last year he had not yet arrived. However, Max had told him all about it and they sent him complete documentation. Still, Thomas is very nervous. He has an accompanist he has been working with for months, someone Max recommended, and that has been going very well, so Thomas has no need of a competition pianist. Last Thursday they ran through the program for some friends and Max, just back from his first full week’s vacation in years, came to listen. He brought his stereo tape deck so the young men could hear their performance again afterwards. He also took lots of notes. ____________________________________ 4 For the preliminaries, Thomas has to sing an oratorio aria, an opera aria and a Lied. But if he reaches the semi-finals, there will have to be something in his repertoire from “Style Period III”, contemporary composers of whom he has been given a list, starting with Absil and ending with B.A. Zimmermann. He will have to sing twelve works, preferably from memory. Luckily Thomas has a capacious memory; he also has a lovely voice. He and his accompanist walk onto the stage and nod in the direction of the jury, chaired by the Belgian tenor Lode Devos. There he is, sitting at his table in the front aisle. And there are Erna Spoorenberg, Alexander Young, Mady Mesplé and Max. He can’t give any marks, but he can be there and he winks encouragement at his student. Aside from the jury the large hall is empty, barring a secretary or two. Not very inspiring. Still, Thomas tries to imagine he is just giving a recital, the way Max advised him to. He stands there in the overheated concert hall between two artificial-looking potted palms and sings the obligatory oratorio aria, opera aria and Lied. On August 30, 1980, the first day of the preliminaries, Max van Egmond leaves his Amsterdam home for ’s-Hertogenbosch, where he will be for eight days. Working hours for the jury members are long, about twelve hours a day. For this (the job is considered an honorary one) they get a little under two thousand guilders, out of which the Dutch members have to pay all their expenses. As usual in the arts, the subsidy is inadequate. The competition first took place in 1954. A foundation for the promotion of music in the town had been started in the preceding year when the city’s Royal Men’s Chorus celebrated its centenary. Originally the vocal competition was meant for singers from the Benelux countries but after only one year it was so popular they made it international in scope and the number of participants rose to over a hundred. Municipal, provincial and national subsidies were available from the start and the local business community helped too, but rising costs and economic decline make the 5 competition’s future uncertain now in 1980. Ton de Laat, who is responsible for organising the competition, has written columns on the subject in the press and the public is urged to make dona- tions. Rooms were reserved for the jury at a first-class hotel on the Parade, but Max decided to combine thrift with pleasure and stay with his sister in neighboring Son. However, during the months between his decision and the competition, he sold his car and by the time he found out that the distance could not easily be bridged by public transport, all the hotel rooms in the vicinity were taken. Max had picked a small inn from the phone book and reserved a room. The taxi driver who takes him there from the station says he is only willing to go because it is broad daylight; he wouldn’t go near the place at night, although it is only a ten-minute walk from the Casino. The room turns out to be reasonably large and spotlessly clean. Max will find out later that the café closes early and that he is the only lodger. Max’s landlady spoils him with delicious snacks, whereas the members of the jury staying at the expensive hotel are confronted even at breakfast with pallid participants. The situation is typical: Max might have planned it this way. He leaves his shockingly heavy Samsonite case in his room and takes the score of Handel’s Belshazzar out of his briefcase. He will have to work on it, as the performance in Utrecht immediately follows the competition. His unanswered correspondence (some of it still unopened) goes into the briefcase too and Max heads for the Casino; he is always behind on his letter-writing, the result of all that traveling. He carries some letters everywhere he goes, just in case he has half an hour to spare.