As a modern city, Harbin has more than 100 years of history barely. However, this growing city has an affinity with music. Accompanied by music, Harbin has always been musically developing and expanding. Since five years, it’s the home for the Schoenfeld International String Competition. Continue reading Harbin and Schoenfeld International String Competition; a City of Music to discover!
by Irma de Jong
Venice is known for many things; the greatness of its settings, architecture, and artwork. It’s like walking in one big open-air museum and not having enough eyes to capture its endless beauty of buildings, churches, palaces and little squares. Many famous people lived in Venice like Marco Polo and Antonio Vivaldi and we lost count of all those who wrote in admiration of the “La Serenissima” Continue reading Visit Venice and its hidden free of tourists spots
by Irma de Jong
Where do we find similarities between classical music and the art of painting? We take inspiration of an oil portrait of Niccolo Paganini, based on a drawing of Ingres and immortalized by Scott E. Bartner, American portrait painter living in Maastricht, the Netherlands. Scott Bartner just recently won the Dutch Portrait Price 2019 (Nederlandse Portret Prijs). We spoke to him about his relation to Paganini and other classical music composers and his passion for painting great artists. Continue reading Paganini’s Portrait by Scott Bartner – Classical Music and Painting
Ever heard of the Dutch painter Jan Havickszoon Steen? He was a Dutch genre painter of the 17th century also known as the Dutch Golden Age. His works are known for their psychological insight, sense of humour and abundance of colour. Jan Steen was born in Leiden, a town in Southern Holland, where his well-to-do, Catholic family were brewers who ran the tavern The Red Halbert for two generations. Jan Steen lived in Warmond, just north of Leiden, from 1656 till 1660 and his house can be found at the beginning of the Jan Steenlaan.
Daily life was Jan Steen’s central pictorial theme. Many of the genre scenes he portrayed, as in The Feast of Saint Nicholas, are lively to the point of chaos and lustfulness, even so much that “a Jan Steen household”, meaning a messy scene, became a Dutch proverb. Subtle hints in his paintings seem to suggest that Steen said to warn the viewer rather than invite him to copy this behaviour. Many of Steen’s paintings bear references to old Dutch proverbs or literature. He often used members of his family as models, and painted quite a few self-portraits in which he showed no tendency of vanity. (Source: Wikipedia page Jan Steen)
In 2019 Warmond is celebrating the year of the Golden Age and its famous painter Jan Steen. Walks, exhibitions and other activities are organised. Find more info here (site is in Dutch).
Many of Steen’s work can be seen in the Rijksmuseum Amsterdam.
When visiting Warmond, don’t miss out a boat trip over the Kagerplassen! We took one with Rederij van Hulst, and can highly recommend their services. There is a beautiful trip of 2,5 hours that brings you to Kaageiland and sails over a big part of the extended Kagerplassen. The Kaag Lakes are a popular area for boating, watersports, fishing, camping and walking. Windmills, waterfront pasture land with grazing animals, quaint Dutch boats and buildings and (in season) flower fields are all part of the charm of boating and walking in this area.
The boat trip goes ashore for 45 minutes on the Kaag island. In addition to a cheese farm, a large shipyard that builds yachts for the rich of the earth, we were lucky to find the music festival that takes place every year the first Sunday in July. Don’t miss it next year! More info here.
Conclude your trip with a walk through Warmond. It is full of nice restaurants and also offers events the whole year through. Famous is the Kaagwater Jazz festival in April.
