Pianist/entertainer Marc Erkens about the Beatles with piano fragments.

MARC ERKENS with a 'chat concert' about the BEATLES. De Beatles. From circa 1962 to 1970, the five of them (John, Paul, George and Ringo plus George Martin as recording producer) wrote and performed 188 original songs. Anyone who reviews the titles can see how many of them have stuck in the memory. ‘Love me, do’, ‘I want to hold your hand’, ‘Hey Jude’, ‘A hard day’s night’, ‘Yesterday’, ‘Here comes the sun’: sometimes we are left with fragments of lyrics, but certainly the melody. Why they are 'earworms', what constitutes their originality, Marc Erkens explains and illustrates it like no other. As a piano teacher, later as 'department head' in what is now the LUCA School of Arts (formerly the Lemmens Institute), after his retirement he became the enthusiastic driving force behind what he himself describes as 'chat concerts'. The light-footed style with which he performs and comments on the piano fragments and the interaction he thereby achieves with the audience are the appreciated hallmark of this. On December 14 at 2 PM he is our guest in De Werf. And there is certainly a lot to tell about the Beatles! The musicologist in Marc Erkens will point out elements of why they have meant so much in music, in his Spielerei he will let us hear how different their repertoire actually is - from ballads to hard rock to blues - and all that with so many recognizable tunes. The 'sixties' of the previous century may be long behind us, but the repertoire endures, and that is due in part to their originality in setting and instrumentation. 'Everything starts with listening' as Radio 1 urges us. In this case: 'LET IT BE'.