A TRIBUTE TO OSCAR VAN HEMEL (1892 - 1981): 4e quatuor a cordes (Muriël van Hemel, Van Hemel Ensemble); Sonata No. 2 (Muriël van Hemel, Frans Douwe Slot); Piano Trio (Muriël van Hemel, Frans Douwe Slot, Van Hemel Ensemble); Sonata (Muriël van Hemel, Frans Douwe Slot).

Description: Oscar van Hemel (1892-1981) was born in Antwerp, Belgium. His father cut cardboard books for barrel organs as an arranger and had a passion for brass bands. This characterized the childhood of Oscar, who played the violin and piano. In 1914, van Hemel successfully completed his violin studies at the Antwerp Conservatory. Three days later, on his birthday, World War I broke out. As a soldier, he was wounded at the Battle of Halen and fled to the Netherlands just before the bombing of Antwerp. There, van Hemel became a violin teacher in Bergen op Zoom and later joined the orchestra of the Nederlandsche Opera in Amsterdam as a violinist. Through the concerts of the Concertgebouw Orchestra, he got to know the then modern works of Debussy, Bartók, Prokofiev and Ravel. In the years 1930–31, he took lessons from Willem Pijper, enriching the compositional insights he had gained from the composers De Boeck and Mortelmans in Antwerp. After the publication of his First Violin Sonata in 1936, he started composing more. Oscar van Hemel was among the most performed Dutch composers in the years 1935–1970. He received several awards for his work and his violin concertos were per- formed by well-known soloists such as Theo Olof and Herman Krebbers with the Concertgebouw Orchestra. Van Hemel was a moderately modern composer who used classical musical forms combined with atonal harmonies and melodies. He applied the twelve-tone technique, bitonality, “germ cell technique” and serialism but continued to strive to captivate his audience through lyricism.