Interview Johan Koning

Impresario Johan Koning (1896-1988) was vanaf 1936 de concertagent van Willem Mengelberg. Koning regelde alle concerten die Mengelberg als gastdirigent buiten Nederland gaf. Koning werkte voor Mengelberg tot aan het eind van diens carrière en bleef hem nadien ook in Zwitserland, waar Mengelberg vanaf 1944 in zijn Chasa Mengelberg verbleef, geregeld opzoeken.

Interview

Fragments of an interview with Johan Koning about the conductor Willem Mengelberg by Sieuwert Verster, 1984.

This interview is composed of unused fragments for the documentary 'Het orkest, geluid van een eeuw', about the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra's centenary in 1988.

Spotlight

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.

The first interviews to be released online are with composer Henk Badings, harpist Phia Berghout and administrator Evert Cornelis Jr. For a wide distribution the interviews are subtitled in English. During the course of 2021, all the remaining interviews regarding Willem Mengelberg will be published online.

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Interview Johan Koning

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