Imprint

“The shortest work of the evening, Michel van der Aa’s fiery and brilliant Imprint, is surely the piece with the greatest chance of making its way into the repertoire. The Dutch composer dares as no other to not only exploit the languishing, sinewy and swelling tones of a Baroque string orchestra, but also to utilize the jagged contours and vitality of a robust, abrasive forte. Imprint is simply a pithy new interpretation of the standard Concerto Grosso, vigorously buffeted against dynamically craggy themes and woven into a net that sustains the piece.”
— Süddeutsche Zeitung, 7 September 2005

“The Dutch composer Michel van der Aa’s “Imprint” comes the closest of the five works to suggesting a model in earlier music, if only in the sense that its demented explosions of string arpeggios find a faint pre-echo in the Freiburg Baroque Orchestra’s bracing recordings of the likes of Biber, Zelenka and Locatelli. But in Mr. van der Aa’s piece the listener’s attention is repeatedly drawn through the gaps in the bristling texture to an almost inaudible chord. That chord shifts as the violin soloist adds and removes pieces of lead from the keys of a chamber organ.”
— New York Times, 25 March 2007

“By far the most gripping piece was Imprint by the young Dutch sensation Michel van der Aa — not least because it was the only work to confront directly the irony of a 21st-century composer meddling in 18th-century sonorities. Van der Aa’s response was twofold. He gave the work the frenetically patterned feel of a Vivaldi concerto, with the leader (the excellent Gottfried von der Goltz) gradually infecting the whole band with manic figuration. But as the piece progressed another process was at work. More and more lead weights were placed on the keys of a chamber organ, building up a permanently sounded chord that glimmered through the strings. For Van der Aa, this represented “the hand of a long-deceased Baroque composer”: a neat metaphor and a clever musical device.”
— The Times, 22 November 2005