A large collection of Twentieth century Dutch Lied, in chronological order. Many composers that are probably only known in my country, and even then not very widely. A quite challenging, at times interesting box.
When I was young I used to joke with a friend about avant-garde art. We used to recite very strong made up poetry consisting only of dramatic words. The fun was to make up the most outrageous words, and then giving them dramatic meaning by voicing very strongly. The last few records of this box made me think of that. The early Eighties were a difficult time, not only in pop music, so much is clear.
Diving in one of the names, I find an intricate web of people that dedicated works, taught, or at least knew each other. In the small world of contemporary music networking is king. Much to my surprise, there are works that were paid for by the City of Amsterdam and the Dutch Government. I don’t know if this still happens, but maybe these works were part of the festivals these institutes supported (I’m looking at you, Holland Festival!).
Oh, and why does composer Joep Straesser have a wiki page in Danish?