1870-1955
Andante
year of composition?
duration: approximately 5′;
publisher: Editions Maurice Senart, Paris 1923;
dedicated to Dorothea J. Loseby;
can be downloaded from the Music Treasures site of the Music Library of the Broadcasting Company.
Exotique
year of composition?
duration: approximately 5′;
publisher: Editions Maurice Senart, Paris 1923;
dedicated to his son;
can be downloaded from the Music Treasures site of the Music Library of the Broadcasting Company.
There is currently virtually no information available about Willem Hekker. Judging from some surviving letters, we may assume that he lived a large part of his life in The Hague. His list of works contains a large number of arrangements, often of opera fragments and often for wind instruments or fanfare or concert bands. Two adaptations from Rossini’s Le barbier de Séville (in French in the autograph) are remarkable: Rosina’s aria for alto saxophone and piano and Basilio’s aria for tuba and piano. Remarkable among the original works is the title Harold de Onversaagde, Romantic Opera in 3 acts and 4 scenes, on a text by J. van Lennep (location: Netherlands Music Institute).
The two compositions for cello and piano are written in a traditional idiom. The cello plays an exclusively soloistic role, which does not mean that no attention has been paid to the piano part. The Andante (in D minor) has a romantic-vocal character, Exotique (in A major) has a gavotte-like basic movement. In both pieces there is room for a solo cadenza of the cello.
(August 12, 2014)