Amsterdam and the Netherlands Fall 2018 - Part 3

Rotterdam is very close to the Hague, with its museums, and I was determined to go to the recently re-opened Mauritshaus, with its famous collection of Dutch Golden Age paintings.  It's a perfectly sized museum, and I enjoyed all the Vermeers, Rembrandts, and de Hoochs.

There was this unusual work, a collaboration between Rubens and Breughel.  Rubens did the Adam and Eve and Breughel did the animals and background.

The Hague is also home to the Gemeentemusuem, a wonderful collection of modern art, with a focus early 20th century art.   The have a lot of Mondrian (over 300 works) and De Stijl works.
The most famous work they have is Mondrian's last, unfinished work, "Victory Boogie-Woogie".  

It's in a room almost by itself; and I somehow had ten minutes with the painting and there was no-one else there.    Until I was interrupted by this guy who looked familiar; he was gracious enough to let me take a picture:

Just kidding!  He wasn't there.

The picture is fascinating; from a distance you see all Mondrian's visual patterns, but when you get closer, you see that it was unfinished, and that Mondrian was using bits of tape to experiment with different possibilities.   Certainly a restorer's nightmare, as the tape now deteriorates and changes color.

Closer:

Even closer:

Elsewhere there was more finished Mondrian:

And there was a lot of early Mondrian, when he was doing landscapes of all kinds:

And a bedroom in red, yellow and blue:

There was an interesting room full of works by a painter I had never heard of, Jacoba van Heemskerke.   She was an early Dutch colleague of Mondrian's, and was clearly very talented.  Yet another case of a woman painter who has been ignored, I would think.   Someone should do an exhibition of her work.

The museum building itself is also interesting, built in the 1930's in an Art Deco style.  I like the colored tiles.

The Hague itself has some nice older parts, but the center has its modern skyscrapers.  It's the capital of the Netherlands.   But things can get kind of grey at times:

Some color in the station, though.

My last night in the Netherlands I went to hear the Concertgebouw Orchestra in the Concertgebouw hall in Amsterdam.  This hall is famed for its acoustics.  I have to agree, the sound is wonderful.  It's a very lively and fully present sound, but with enough clarity to satisfy my musical interests.  The orchestral stage is somewhat more elevated than usual, and, of course, the hall is much smaller than the usual North American concert halls.    At intermission, everyone got up quite quickly to go to the lobby areas; it turns out that the Concertgebouw serves free drinks at intermission.   Now maybe that's a marketing ploy that the beleaguered New York Philharmonic should try!  

The program included two early Strauss pieces, "Don Juan" and "Death and Transfiguration".    The latter was very interesting.   I am somehow incapable of connecting a program (story) of a piece to the actual listening experience, so it's all absolute music to me.    But I still followed the music in my own way.   An unusual rarity on the program was a performance of an orchestration of Berg's piano sonata (an early work).   The orchestration was excellent; it felt like a newly discovered orchestral work by Berg, and it was especially fascinating being heard in the context of the Strauss.
Needless to say, the performances were excellent.

After the concert, I took the train back to an airport hotel that I had booked because of an early flight the next day.  
A last photo, while waiting in the Amsterdam train station.   Yes;  red, yellow, and blue and rectangles.  I was beginning to see them everywhere.