Sun, wind, rustling tree leaves and walking noise on the crackling gravel pleasantly coincide with Simeon ten Holt’s composition Canto ostinato. The piece that became a classic hit is alternately meditative, overwhelming, melancholic and dynamic. Ten Holt’s masterpiece is performed in this recumbent concert on two marimbas and two vibraphones with the Park as the perfect backdrop.

If you play the notes that make up the score of Canto ostinato in succession, you will probably be done in about 20 minutes. But that is not what Simeon ten Holt had in mind. Between 1973 and 1979, the composer from Bergen in North Holland worked on this piece ‘for one or more keyboard instruments’.

Canto is a succession of sections with and without repetition marks. On the spot, the performers decide when to move to the next section. They choose the manner of playing (staccato, marcato, legato), the dynamics (piano, mezzo, forte) and the motifs or their variants. His musicians thus give Ten Holt unprecedented freedom. No performance of Canto is the same.