Joost Willemze: Rhapsodos
7 Mountain Records

In ancient Greece, a “rhapsodos” traveled from town to town performing great epics before enraptured audiences, a story-telling tradition Dutch concert harpist Joost Willemze (b. 1996) embraces on his debut solo album. Homer's Odyssey is the exemplar of that ancient tradition in the way it packages narrative and music into a sweeping presentation—how apt that the instrument with which singer-bards accompanied themselves, the lyre, would be a distant forerunner of the harp. Though young, Willemze has established himself as a leading harpist of his generation; that he's as comfortable performing Baroque as contemporary music is certainly a major strength, as is the fact that he's actively pushing beyond the traditional boundaries of the harp and adding to its repertoire with commissioned pieces. A multiple award winner, he performs in the Netherlands and abroad and was recently appointed harp professor at Codarts, the Rotterdam Conservatory.

Just as rhapsodes weren't composers but instead performers who adopted existing material and breathed life into it anew with every telling, so too has Willemze thoughtfully curated a programme of existing and newly created works (three of the album's eight were written for him) to explore the album's theme. That Rhapsodos accentuates new material is consistent with Willemze's contention that the album's “not meant as a historical reconstruction, but as a contemporary reflection.” Sonically, that same idea manifests itself in the occasional electronic treatments that are applied to the harp. That said, however ‘modern' a piece might be, it never loses sight of the qualities that make the instrument so appealing, such as its capacity for dazzling the ear with crystalline textures and strums and engaging on percussive and rhythmic grounds. While the prettiness of the harp's sound is well-accounted for, Willemze isn't afraid to expose its wilder side in the occasional violent episode that arises.

Conceived as a recital opener, Marcel Grandjany's Rhapsodie fittingly begins Rhapsodos too. For this long-form, nine-minute travelogue, the composer drew on material from a Gregorian chant but treated it as a springboard for his own imagining (even so, in its bluesy opening expressions the material calls to mind Monk's “‘Round Midnight”). Willemze's artistry comes through vividly in the way he patiently and circumspectly elaborates on the material, plucks and strums intertwining brilliantly in his playing. As striking are his control, deployment of space, and handling of pacing and dynamics, each of which cumulatively adds to the dramatic effect of the music.

Anne-Maartje Lemereis sequenced her Me-de-a so that it would develop from a tiny motif based on the letters of the name into a slow-building declamation intended to convey the title character's intensifying rage, its abrupt end even punctuated by a yelp. The understated manner by which the music grows ever more unsettling is artfully administered by both composer and performer. Also reflective of the album's mythological dimension is Carlos Michans's Trois Moments d'Orphée, which of course uses the myth of Orpheus as a reference and touches on the figure's descent into the underworld to rescue Eurydice. Whereas a mood of profound sadness permeates the bleak and brooding “Orphée enragé après la mort d'Eurydice,” cautious steps are taken during the shadowy central part, “La descente d'Orphée dans l'Hadès,” to convincingly suggest the nerves-fraying journey before the mysterious “La tête d'Orphée emportée par l'Hèbre” ends the piece provocatively. In their Event Horizon (The Point of No Return), Ramin Amin Tafreshi and Soheil Sayesteh also explore the Orpheus myth, with harp personifying his treacherous journey and painterly electronic effects evoking the dark, mystical realm into which he plunges.

A second three-part work follows, Caroline Lizotte's Suite Galactique a probing meditation on the upper spheres, “Exosphère” poetic and enigmatic, “Hymne au bon combat” ponderous and serene, and “Scherzo del pueblo” animated and subtly Spanish-tinged. Guillaume Connesson's Toccata sustains the energy of Lizotte's scherzo, with this time cycling patterns imparting breezy momentum and buoyancy. Pearl Chertok's Around the Clock Suite moves the focus away from ultra-dramatic works to one with a little more levity. Four compact movements compose the smile-inducing suite, the rhythms in “Ten past two” and "Harpicide at midnight” light, swinging, and jazzy, “Beige nocturne” rather Ellington-esque, and “The morning after” dreamily cinematic. Closing the circle, a second piece by Grandjany concludes the album, this one, the pretty The Colorado Trail, based on a traditional American folk song and grounded in the story of a traveling cowboy—a kind of Western rhapsode, one might say.

May 2026