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Asko Ensemble

From HitStory, the pop encyclopedia of School of Rock · Artist

The Asko Ensemble was a Dutch ensemble for contemporary classical music, founded in 1965 and based in Amsterdam. For the first five years it was led by Jan Vriend, after which it worked with Cliff Crego, among others, and with conductors such as Riccardo Chailly, Oliver Knussen, Reinbert de Leeuw, George Benjamin, Stefan Asbury and Peter Rundel. In 2009 the ensemble merged with the Schönberg Ensemble to form Asko|Schönberg, which in 2025 took the name Het Muziek.

Music and breakthrough

The ensemble gave regular concerts and also made programmes with film music, dance and multimedia, and performed modern opera. It released almost a hundred recordings, with work by Louis Andriessen, Elliott Carter, György Ligeti, Bruno Maderna, Olivier Messiaen, Edgard Varèse, Claude Vivier and Iannis Xenakis. A series of CDs, the Ligeti Project, was devoted entirely to Ligeti and includes his Hamburg Concerto and Double Concerto, among others. Messiaen's Des canyons aux étoiles also appeared on CD in 1994.

Influence

The first performances were important. The Asko Ensemble gave the first performance of Brian Ferneyhough's Terrain in 1992, of parts of Karlheinz Stockhausen's Mittwoch aus Licht in 1996, of Elliott Carter's Asko Concerto in 2000 and of Ligeti's Hamburg Concerto in 2001. Michel van der Aa's opera After Life in 2006 was also first heard here. In this way the ensemble brought new music by living composers to the public and kept the Dutch tradition of modern music alive.

Listening

Listening tip. Listen to Ligeti's Hamburg Concerto in the recording by the Asko Ensemble. Notice the unusual tone colours of the instruments and how the ensemble holds the many small motifs together.

Discography

Studio albums

Categories: Artists