Thom de Klerk

Thom de Klerk (Thomas Johannes Josephus) (the Netherlands, the Hague, May 10, 1912 - Abcoude, October 13, 1966). Dutch bassoonist, double reed maker, music teacher, conductor and music director. Thom de Klerk was the first solo bassoonist of the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra from 1935 until 1966. He was successful with the directors Willem Mengelberg, Eduard van Beinum and Bernard Haitink. Guest directors like Eugen Jochum, Arturo Toscanini and Pierre Monteux made special requests for his presence in the orchestra.

Thom de Klerk studied at the Royal Conservatorium in the Hague with Jacq. Poons, an old school teacher who let his pupils study musical scales for hours on end. Some of Poons’s other pupils were David Meyer and Louis Stotijn, who both later became solo bassoonists in the Residentie Orchestra in the Hague. In 1935 Thom de Klerk, aged twenty-three, won the appointment to first solo bassoonist with the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra under the direction of Willem Mengelberg. The Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra was voted best symphony orchestra in the world in 2008, being in the top ten since its foundation.

Just after the Second World War de Klerk was invited to be a consultant to the renowned builder of music instruments Cabart in Paris. The story goes that during the Second World War the Nazis had forced the French oboe factory Cabart to build German bassoons, though the archive proving or disproving this account was lost. The bassoons produced after the Second World War upon approval received the hallmark Cabart/de Klerk.

In 1950 Thom de Klerk started his own bassoon atelier. At first on the top floor of his home in Amsterdam, later in a larger atelier in the very heart of that city in a historical street called the Nes, on which site the Flemish Cultural Centre has now been built. The number of bassoons produced in total remained modest though. The talents of Thom de Klerk were many, however being a business man was not one of them. Running the business on a day-to-day basis he left to his in-laws - not one of his brightest ideas. Fairly soon in 1952, the bassoon atelier went bankrupt.

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