We Love You Hans Haffmans!
As I type, I hear on the radio the brass fanfare from the beginning of the final movement of Bartok's Concerto for Orchestra, alerting us that it's 11pm and time for our weekly broadcast of "Live! at the Concertgebouw". It's a good program with varied programs beautifully played by different ensembles.
But what we really like about the program is the announcer: Hans Haffmans. Shortly after the opening fanfare, we squeal with delight to hear "…this is Hans Haffmans." We love his voice, his radio personality, his commentary, his accent — the entire package. It's such a treat, when we've forgotten that it's getting late on Wednesday night, to have Hans to remind us.
We had clues that he was Dutch (like: the name of the program, for one), but we might have guessed. His English is beautiful, melodic, energetic, and precise, virtually accent-free except for a little tightness around the lips that one often hears from speakers whose native language is Germanic. Mind you, this is not a detriment at all. No, no, no, it just adds a tiny verbal quirk to his on-air persona, the salt in the cake that really brings up the taste. And — oh boy! — can he pronounce those difficult names of obscure European composers (names that sometimes tax the talents of our local announcers on the station we're listening to).* Like the best Swiss hoteliers, he seems comfortable with several languages.
I was pleased to find that Radio Netherlands Music, which produces the program, has a nice biographical page for Hans Haffmans. I was even more pleased that Mr. Haffmans looks enough like what I'd imagined from his voice that I don't need to alter significantly my own mental image that accompanies it. Why, we don't even have to roll out the old saying about "a face made for radio". I can even convince myself that I see in Mr. Haffmans' picture that little tightness in his voice as a kind of pert sensuousness in his lips, but I'll stop there before I embarrass the poor man.
His list of musical heroes ("Monteverdi, Purcell, Bach, Mozart, Bruckner, Stravinsky, Messiaen") is admirable even if it doesn't include some of mine, but these are good choices. Again: a bit of a relief from which we deduce that he is, indeed, the sensible person that he sounds like he should be.
But now, back to the program. The music's almost ended, so Hans will be talking again.
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*However, the talent here on the Baltimore station is not nearly so tragic as what I listened to when I was in North Carolina in graduate school, listening to the public radio station from NC State University. I vividly remember my surprise at hearing the name of conductor Sir John Barbirolli pronounced as "Sir John Barryboolie" (the closest orthographic transcription I can manage).