PATRICK MARCHAL GALLERY

            invites you
to the first opening of its first exhibition
A moment in spring...
            on the crossroad between
music, word and image

            SIGISWALD KUIJKEN
            CHRISTINE GRUWEZ
            PATRICK MARCHAL

Share this moment on Thursday 29.03 - 05.04 - 12.04 - 19.04
            from 6 to 8 pm
8 Galerie du Roi #4
1000 Brussels
T. +32 496287248
patrick@patrickmarchalgallery.com
www.patrickmarchalgallery.com
and by appointment from March 29 until June 14 2007

A moment in spring...

on the crossroad between music, word and image

SIGISWALD KUIJKEN
CHRISTINE GRUWEZ
PATRICK MARCHAL

A mountain, any mountain needs to be seen from a distance.

Because only from a distance, its presence can start to vibrate, to reveal.
This right distance is a mystery in itself. It cannot be measured and it can never be the same.
You do not have to approach. The distance learns that it is the mountain that comes to you.
There will first be a sphere of awareness, where light and darkness celebrate their never ending entanglement.
But a mountain remains true to itself.
It is pure being, pure with a taste of eternity.

Only in the proximity of a lake, near to the humble listening of the water, a mountain can unveil its most hidden part.
Because inside of it there is a longing, as if it was a fire, that wants to break through the immobility of the rock.
That wants to break through the heavy layers of memory, who have shaped its stony mass. To forget, at last.
To drift and float away. As a cloud. Forever free.

Christine Gruwez

Sigiswald Kuijken

Sigiswald Kuijken was born in 1944 close to Brussels. He studied violin at the conservatories of Bruges and Brussels, completing his studies at the latter institution with Maurice Raskin in 1964. He came into contact with early music at a very young age, together with his brother Wieland. Studying on his own, he gained a thorough knowledge of specific 17th- and 18th-century performance techniques and conventions of interpretation on violin and viola da gamba This led to the introduction, in 1969, of a more authentic way of playing the violin, whereby the instrument was no longer held under the chin, but lay freely on the shoulder; this was to have a crucial influence on the approach to the violin repertoire and was consequently adopted by many players starting in the early 1970s.

From 1964 to 1972, Sigiswald Kuijken was a member of the Brussels-based Alarius Ensemble (with Wieland Kuijken, Robert Kohnen and Janine Rubinlicht), which performed throughout Europe and in the United States. He subsequently undertook individual chamber music projects with a number of Baroque music specialists, chief among which were his brothers Wieland and Barthold and Robert Kohnen, as well as Gustav Leonhardt, Frans Bruggen Anner Bylsma and René Jacobs.

In 1972, with the encouragement of Deutsche Harmonia Mundi and Gustav Leonhardt, he founded the Baroque orchestra La Petite Bande, which since then has given innumerable concerts throughout Europe, Australia, South America, China and Japan, and has made many recordings for a number of labels (including Deutsche Harmonia Mundi, Seon, Virgin, Accent, Denon, Hyperion….).

In 1986 he founded the Kuijken String Quartet (with François Fernandez, Marleen Thiers and Wieland Kuijken), which specialises in the quartets and quintets (with Ryo Terakado as first violist) of the Classical period. Recordings of quartets and quintets by Mozart and Haydn have appeared on Denon.

In 2004 Sigiswald Kuijken reintroduced in practical performance the Viola da spalla (shouldercello, very probably the instrument Bach had in mind when writing his six cellosolo’s): concerts and recordings of Bach, Vivaldi…

From 1971 to 1996, Sigiswald Kuijken taught Baroque violin at the Koninklijk Conservatorium in The Hague; since 1993 he has taught at the Koninklijk Muziekconservatorium in Brussels. In addition, he has for many years been in demand as a guest teacher at a number of institutions (including the Royal College of Music in London, Salamanca University, the Accademia Chigiana in Siena, the Conservatoire of Geneva, the Musikhochschule of Leipzig).

Since 1998, Sigiswald Kuijken occasionally conducts "modern" symphonic orchestras in romantic programms (Beethoven, Schumann, Brahms, Mendelssohn).

Nov 2006