The first piece I ever heard by Johan de Meij was his first symphony, entitled “The Lord of the Rings,” whose movements were:

  1. Gandalf
  2. Lothlórien
  3. Gollum
  4. Journey in the Dark
  5. Hobbits

It was quite interesting and they type of symphonic music to which I really enjoy listening. The music was quite evocative, conjuring up (pardon the pun) images of the characters from the books (and now movies).

A few weeks ago I worked my Tuesday evening shift until 10pm and was driving home listening to the local classical station and heard music that was interesting enough that I purposed to sit in the car when I got home until the piece was done so I could find out what it was and who wrote it. That’s only happened to me a couple of times before. Anyway, the piece ended right before I got home and I found it was the Symphony No. 3 by Johan de Meij, called Planet Earth, with only three movements:

  1. Lonely Planet
  2. Planet Earth
  3. Mother Earth

That night I looked online to try to find a CD of this piece and it took a while because he just wrote it last year. I eventually was able to find ONE recording by a Dutch orchestra (go figure! they were the ones who commissioned and premiered it) and I emailed our Music Librarian to recommend buying it for our library. She did and it just got finished processing this week. Yesterday I got to hear the whole thing for the first time and I really enjoyed it. I don’t want to give much away, but it’s got big, majestic sounds and delicate, quiet sounds. You definitely want to have the sound up solid when you listen to this, whether on headphones or in a room.

Johan de Meij’s composition style seems to combine elements from Respighi, Holst, and Stravinsky (all of which I like). He made good use of choir (no words, just voices) a la the “Jupiter” movement from Holst’s The Planets. You can read a brief bio and see a list of all his compositions at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johan_de_Meij. You can’t find this third symphony on Amazon yet, but the rest of his works you can. The third symphony is available here.