2024-2025

21 August 2025
Lecture on Franz Liszt in the Netherlands as part of a meeting organized by the Language and Culture Society Den Orde van den Prince. This meeting in the Pieter Gerritszaal in Heilig Landstichting will be preceded by a guided tour in the beautiful Cenakelkerk and concluded by pianist Sebastiaan Oosthout, who will play selected pieces from Franz Liszt’s Années de Pèlerinage. This is a private gathering, exclusively for members of Den Orde van den Prince and invited guests.

April
In Piano Bulletin of EPTA-Netherlands, Volume 43 (2025/1), ‘Valse pour Marie by Franz Liszt – a reconstruction’ appeared. See under ‘December 2024’.

26 January 2025
Book review of Franz Liszt in the Netherlands at the Cultural Center/Music Theater RondoM, Linthorst Homanstraat 22 in Wilhelminaoord. Start: 3:00 p.m. Admission: €17.50. With five musical intermezzos by pianist Tobias Borsboom, who will play compositions by Liszt that the composer himself performed in the Netherlands.

December 2024
Published in the Journal of the Franz Liszt Circle (2024):
– ‘Franz Liszt and Mihály Munkácsy – a friendship in the shadow of death’, a lengthy study of the relationship between the famous pianist and the no less famous Hungarian-French painter, a friendship that was a source of inspiration to both of them.
– ‘Valse pour Marie by Franz Liszt – a reconstruction’. When Franz Liszt was in The Hague in 1842, he composed a charming waltz for his beloved Marie d’Agoult in Paris. In this article, we follow the process of publication: from corrections in two previously published editions, through the addition of missing articulation, phrasing, and dynamics, to the realization on the keyboard.

The last bars of Franz Liszt’s Valse pour Marie in manuscript.

December 7, 2024
On Saturday, December 7, at ten past six in the morning to be precise, I woke up startled. It was as if a prehistoric monster with an enormous roar shot past me. I was standing right next to my bed and wanted to open my bedroom door to see what was going on, but no matter how hard I pulled and tugged, the door would not budge. Looking out the window, I saw a car on fire, with fireworks occasionally shooting up into the air. Somewhat reassured, I got dressed, tried to open the door again, but when that really didn’t work, I stepped onto the bedroom balcony and only then saw that the houses on the corner of the long leg of the L-shaped building, adjacent to my house, had been completely destroyed. The roof was sloping downwards and a red glow illuminated the macabre scene. I heard people screaming, saw emergency services climbing over the rubble and a little boy in his underpants sliding down a sloping wall: the only survivor from the house next to my neighbour’s, who also died. His wife had been trapped under the rubble for twelve hours, but she survived. Miraculously, I escaped without a scratch. Waving a flashlight, I was quickly spotted by two firefighters and rescued from the bedroom balcony with a ladder.

Together with other residents, I was taken care of in an exemplary manner by the municipality and emergency services. My best friend and two brothers from the north and east of the country, alerted by the media, quickly arrived by car, and I was warmly welcomed by family in Wassenaar for the first week. After that, the Staedion housing association offered me a replacement home. Dozens, no, hundreds of phone calls, emails, and text messages, even from Italy, Spain, the United States, and the Congo, from friends, colleagues at the Royal Conservatory and former students supported me during this difficult time, demonstrating that the incident received worldwide attention. And all of this happened because a miscreant sought to take revenge on his former girlfriend and believed it necessary to destroy her storage of hundreds of expensive wedding dresses embellished with precious lace and quasi-diamond glitter…. Well, in this he has been entirely successful! The scorched remnants of the dresses were hanging in the trees! The fact that he and the criminals who carried out the order also destroyed six lives and seriously disrupted the existence of 43 families and business owners apparently never occurred to them….

However, my house, a maisonette above a shop, was so badly damaged by the enormous explosion that it had to be demolished, along with the completely destroyed houses and the entrance hall and stairs. Before the demolishing, however, I was allowed to go in my house one last time with two men from the emergency services to collect the most important possessions, such as my computer, some clothes, a few books, and a couple of paintings. A few days later, although it was actually forbidden and at risk to their own lives, the same guys—I am so grateful to them!—rescued my Liszt archive and library, including 1,000 LPs and about 1,500 CDs! A real tour de force was the rescue of my old Bechstein concert grand, which was expertly hoisted out of the already half-demolished apartment, protected by cushions from my couch. The images have been seen all over the world!

Nevertheless, much has been lost. From washing machine to salt shaker, from sofa to kitchen utensils and crockery, everything will have to be replaced. The worst thing is that all the CDs I recorded and partly released myself and most of my music publications, which were stored in the basement, are completely lost. Fortunately, I had a box of each of my CDs in my study and I kept a few copies of my compositions and editions in my music library, but most of it is gone and will have to be reissued. Whether that will be possible at my age (79) is highly questionable. Many of the items offered on the website will therefore not be available in the near future. I don’t dare to think about the consequences for the redesign of my website yet…

The good news is that after a few months in temporary accommodation in Scheveningen, I have now acquired a nice apartment in Apeldoorn, where I was born and raised. It seemed like a good idea to close the circle there and return to the place where I was born. Whether that will also be where the final chord of the symphony of life will sound is still uncertain. Perhaps I will return to The Hague when my house has been completely restored, perhaps I will stay in Apeldoorn. What is certain, however, is that I will try to give the aforementioned composition a beautiful finale… Emergo et resurrexit!

9 November 2024
Book presentation Franz Liszt in the Netherlands during the annual congress of EPTA-Netherlands at the Akoesticum in Ede, starting 16:00 hrs. Musical accompaniment will be provided by pianist Tobias Borsboom, who will perform several compositions which Liszt himself played in the Netherlands. He will also perform a brief waltz that the great pianist composed in The Hague for his beloved Marie d’Agoult in Paris. This waltz is a completely unknown, charming, not very difficult piece reproduced at the back of my book, and also available as a sheet music edition (AB-II-29).

7 October 2024
In the year 1991, I offered my father, the well-known schoolbook author H.G. Brussee, a catalogue of his extensive oeuvre, preceded by a brief biography and followed by an anthology of his works. It was a simple home edition, not intended for public sale. I revised, expanded and republished that book in the course of this year: a memoir of over 200 pages, published in full-colour, and illustrated with many photos and the often beautiful covers of his books. For more information, see WRITINGS > Books & Brochures > AB-III-05.

26 October 2024
On Saturday 26 October, the annual Liszt Day, organised by the Franz Liszt Circle, takes place in the Westvest90-church in Schiedam, starting at 14:00. The central topic of the day is ‘Liszt’s song transcriptions’. The programme opens with a lieder recital by the renowned bass-baritone Marc Pantus, accompanied at the piano by Daan Boertien. Next, I will give a lecture on the genre song transcription and explore the subject in greater detail with the help of two songs – the wonderful Auf Flügeln des Gesanges by Mendelssohn and Gute Nacht by Schubert. The day will conclude with a piano recital by pianist Ketevan Sharumashvili, who will perform the grandiose Dante Sonata alongside some keyboard arrangements (Wagner-Liszt; Schubert-Liszt).

Entrance €25; for donors of the Franz Liszt Circle €20.