The
Residentie Orchestra
(
Dutch
:
Residentie Orkest
) is an
orchestra
from
The Hague
in the
Netherlands
. Outside the Netherlands it is often known as
The Hague Philharmonic
. The name “Residentie” (“Residence”) shows that it comes from The Hague, which is where the Dutch
parliament
meets. The Hague is the “residence of the Queen’s parliament”, although it is not the capital city of the Netherlands. The orchestra are internationally famous.
The orchestra started to form in
1903
when a group of musicians who called themselves the “Residentie Orkest” gave a concert in the Gebouw voor Kunsten en Wetenschappen (Building for Arts and Sciences) in the centre of the Hague. By the end of the following year they had formed to give regular concerts. Their concert on
20 November
1904
is taken to be the official beginning of the orchestra.
The first conductor of the orchestra was Henri Viotta, who soon made it a very good orchestra. Famous composers came to conduct their own works with the orchestra. These included
Richard Strauss
,
Igor Stravinsky
,
Max Reger
and
Maurice Ravel
. The orchestra was sometimes conducted by the Dutch composer Peter van Anrooy, as well as their guest conductor
George Szell
.
The orchestra continued to be internationally known, and some very famous conductors came to conduct the orchestra, including
Arturo Toscanini
,
Bruno Walter
,
Leonard Bernstein
and
Hans Knappertsbusch
.
.
During the years after
World War II
, from 1949 to 1973,
Willem van Otterloo
was the chief conductor. They gave regular concerts in the Hague and in
Amsterdam
and made recordings for
Philips
Gramophone. Van Otterloo introduced them to many different styles of music. As in its earlier days, the orchestra often played modern music conducted by the composers:
Bruno Maderna
,
Mauricio Kagel
,
John Cage
and
Pierre Boulez
conducted their works. Recordings were made with other conductors including
Gennady Rozhdestvensky
and
Evgenii Svetlanov
who included music by less well-known
Russian
composers.
Jaap van Zweden
, who conducted the orchestra for the first five years of this century, took them on tour to
Japan
and
South America
and they made recordings to celebrate 100 years of the orchestra. Van Zweden is still Honorary Guest Conductor of the orchestra.
Today the orchestra’s chief conductor is
Neeme Jarvi
. Many new things have been started, including some concerts given by the Residentie Scratch Orchestra, in which
amateur
players can join the
professional
players of the orchestra to give a concert.
The Residentie Orchestra gave many of their concerts in the Gebouw voor Kunsten en Wetenschappen (more simply known as “K&W Building”), but also the summer concerts in the Kurzaal in
Scheveningen
, the seaside resort of the Hague, were very famous. Until 1915 these had been given by the
Orchestre Lamoureux
. The Residentie took them over and continued them until 1968.
The orchestra moved out of the K&W Building in 1964. Shortly afterwards the building was destroyed by
fire
. The Residentie Orchestra gave their regular concerts in the Kurzaal until
1968
when they moved to the Congresgebouw (Congress Building) in the west of the Hague. This was still not a very good concert hall and in 1987 they were able to move to the new Dr. Anton Philipszaal in the centre of the town. There are plans now to build a completely new arts complex there.