Westerlinck, Wilfried

Wilfried Westerlinck -Landscapes III for brass quintet

(Leuven, 3 October 1945)

(1980)

Wilfried Westerlinck studied at the Royal Conservatoires of Brussels and Antwerp under composers such as Victor Legley, Jan Louël and August Verbesselt, as well as under composer-conductor Daniël Sternefeld. In Monte Carlo he continued studying orchestral conducting under Igor Markevitch. Between 1971 and 1983, he taught music analysis at the Royal Flemish Conservatoire of Antwerp, however, he built a career as a producer of the classical radio station of the Flemish Belgian Radio and Television (BRT). As a composer he came into the spotlight with the orchestral piece Metamorfose (1971), his series Landschappen (1977-2020) for various ensembles, three string quartets (1978- 1994), three piano sonatas (1983-1986) and various solo pieces for wind instruments, such as the often performed Kijk, een basklarinet in mijn tuin! (Look, there’s a bass clarinet in my garden!) (1985) for bass clarinet, Talisman (2001) for clarinet and Meeting a Mockingbird in Texas (2009) for piccolo. In 2015 and 2018 the albums Mockingbird and Talisman were released, which included more recent works like Quattro pezzi for clarinet and harp (2007-2015), Three collages ‘Hommage to E.L.T. Mesens’ for flute and harp (2013-2014) and Suite de Montsouris for violin and guitar (2014).
Landscapes IV belongs to a series of nine Landscapes, all single-part compositions for different instrumentations:

Landscapes I – Wind Quintet
Landscapes II – String orchestra
Landscapes III – Brass Quintet
Landscapes IV – Flute, harp and string trio
Landscapes V – Trumpet and strings
Landscapes VI – String quartet
Landscapes VII – Clarinet and string quartet
Landscapes VIII – Alto saxophone and strings
Landscapes IX – Piano quartet

The entire series of nine Landscapes created so far fall into two sets. The first series was created between 1977 and 1983 (I-V), the second was created between 2008 and 2020. It is especially in the first series that there is great diversity of instrumentation. The composer wanted to explore the instrumentation of winds, strings and brass in quick succession. …

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