Interview

Camiel Boomsma, musician, writer, thinker – three capacities that do not exist alongside each other in him, but are interwoven. “That has gradually developed,” he tells us, “though I have always felt that this combination was essential to me.” He calls himself first and foremost a pianist, but writing is no side matter for him: it is the way he allows the context surrounding the music he performs to grow. “During study you spend much time on the basics – fingerings, technique, sound, phrasing. But once that is done, you arrive at what really matters: the musical story. In my writing I try to get as close as possible to that essence in my formulations.”

Boomsma seeks that essence just as much at the piano as at his writing desk, and it leads him to extremes. On one hand the monumental, philosophical register of Liszt and Wagner; on the other hand the restrained intimacy of a forgotten nineteenth-century Dutch composer like Gerhard Hamm. “I love both the grand gesture and the smaller, intimate,” he says. “Wagner connects with what I have always been searching for: a deeper meaning that speaks to us through multiple paths. But at the same time I enjoy composers who can say much with few notes. That simplicity has something uniquely moving about it, and even something relativizing.” The combination of the grand and the small, he says, is the ideal balance for him.

A stack of sheet music

The story of Gerhard Hamm does not begin in an archive or a library, but after a concert, with a stack of sheet music pressed into Boomsma’s hands by Carl Hamm, a direct descendant of the composer. “Usually I react somewhat skeptically to that at first,” Boomsma admits, “but when I went home and played through it, I was immediately moved.” It would not be until 2021 that this first contact developed into an album – Rediscovered – but the music did not let him go in the meantime. That he continued to entertain the idea all those years of doing something with this music says much about the lasting impression Hamm had made on him. At the release, tellingly, no fewer than seven members of the Hamm family were in the hall.

Now, five years later, comes Unforgotten, and Boomsma emphasizes that it is not a simple repetition of the formula. “On Unforgotten you get, I think, an even more mature and more versatile Hamm,” he says. The two titles are far from randomly chosen: they are mirror images of each other. “I find the word ‘Unforgotten’ very beautiful. It is also not easily translated. Because Hamm has fallen so completely into oblivion, such a title really fits the bill. It is as if you blow a thick layer of dust off a book. The color gradually returns, you see a cover, you leaf through pages that have been untouched for years.” An image that, more than any explanation, captures exactly what Boomsma aims for with this project.

Yet he does not want to reduce Hamm to a footnote to Robert Schumann, with whom the composer is regularly associated. “I think that would do him injustice,” he says firmly. “Now that I have recorded the second album, I have come to the conclusion that there is a ‘Hamm sound’. You absolutely hear echoes of other greats, but he also has something of his own – a very creative, distinctive signature that runs like a golden thread through his oeuvre.” Why that signature disappeared so thoroughly from the collective memory after Hamm’s death remains difficult for Boomsma to explain. “In the nineteenth century there were enormously many canons – Chopin, Schumann, Liszt, Wagner. The smaller names were easily overshadowed. The Netherlands was perhaps also somewhat more ‘Biedermeier’ at that time. It is difficult to find one explanation for it.”

Working without predecessors

On the new album, the Capriccio and the Impromptu particularly stand out for Boomsma. “The Impromptu reveals a surprising side of Hamm,” he explains. “The piece sounds like an improvisation in one free, flowing movement, as if he is responding to each spontaneous musical idea. In the Capriccio you hear Hamm’s sense for melodic beauty. The piece is narrative, speaks very much to the imagination and is full of unexpected turns.” Not all the music on the album is freshly discovered material – Boomsma had some of it already, while his further research also turned up genuinely new pieces.

Performing works like these without the burden, but also without the support of a performance tradition, he does not experience as lonely, but as a liberation. “Wonderful to be able to be completely open and creative,” he says. “It immediately teaches you something essential about how you should continue to approach music: with a fresh perspective.” That same freedom is precisely what attracts him in the broader search for unknown repertoire. “There is so much beautiful unknown music. We actually perform only a small part of it, and that is a shame. Unknown music carries no performance tradition. That is wonderful for your own creativity and freedom.”

Deepening in a fleeting time

Boomsma believes that concert life today is more open to this kind of rediscoveries than it was ten years ago – although he also sees room for improvement. “Fortunately, we also play much more music by female composers and pay attention to contemporary music,” he says, though he notes with dry wit that “a premiere often turns out to be a finale as well.” It is not enough to rescue a work from oblivion, he believes; it must also continue to live. “Bringing it to life is the first step, but then it really begins. I think that is also essential for composers to become part of our collective memory.”

He notices that the audience has an ear for this. “Especially in combination with a story, like that of Hamm. The audience responds strongly to context, and I understand that too. The story of the pile of scores that was pressed into my hands speaks directly to the imagination. This immediately gives the music a positive and inspiring feeling.” According to him, this is less necessary for established names – though an inspiring story can never hurt there either.

In a time when attention is becoming ever more fleeting, Boomsma sees the lasting relevance of classical music in this very fact. “I think many people are precisely craving the opposite of the fleeting. Depth and pure emotion are a human need. Classical music offers that at all times. It never disappoints.”

Not an ideal, but a feeling of rightness

Does such a thing as an ideal performance exist? Boomsma nuances the concept without dismissing it. “A live performance can above all be ideal in the moment of experience, although there are also iconic recordings that never lose their shine.” For him, a performance is ideal when it is completely authentic and coincides with the musician’s musical identity. “Not because you completely agree with all the musical choices, but because it feels right. Moreover, in such a case, you are not concerned with that at all.” As a player himself, he admits, you are less concerned with that anyway – it remains an ongoing process. “That is part of artistry, and you, fortunately, never get away from that.”

To young musicians who want to dig into forgotten repertoire themselves, Boomsma has an unequivocal message: “Don’t hesitate, just do it! We all do so many of the same things already. It is enriching for yourself in so many ways.” He himself does not think of stopping such explorations, even though the established repertoire remains a cornerstone of his playing. “I love the alternation between the known and the unknown. There is so much beauty to discover and still to be done. In my mind, I always have at least three projects that I would like to realize. But a person only has so much time, so patience is also important.”

With Unforgotten, Camiel Boomsma adds yet another page to a book that was closed for a long time. The dust is off. It is, as he himself says, up to us as listeners to keep turning the pages.