In 1988, a documentary was made for Dutch VPRO television by Sieuwert Verster and Ad ‘s-Gravesande about the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra’s centenary, called ‘Het orkest, geluid van een eeuw’ [The orchestra, sound of a century]. Research for this documentary included interviews by Sieuwert Verster with (former) orchestra members and others involved with the Concertgebouw Orchestra.
Several years after finishing the documentary producer Sieuwert Verster handed over the raw film materials (which are often destroyed after these kind of productions) to the Nederlands Muziek Instituut (Netherlands Music Institute) in The Hague. Only a few fragments of the interviews had been used for the documentary and parts of the interviews related to the conductor Willem Mengelberg will now (2020), many years later, be published for the first time via the website of the Willem Mengelberg Society (and on YouTube).
The biographer of Willem Mengelberg, Frits Zwart, worked out the idea and with financial support of the Willem Mengelberg Stiftung (Switzerland) digitization and editing of image and sound were realised.
For a wide distribution the interviews are subtitled in English.
