Dschingis Khan (1162-1227)

The overture recalls the feats of one of the great heroic personalities in the history of the Mongols and one of the great conquerors in the history of mankind: Genghis Khan.

He succeeded in uniting the Mongol peoples and tribes, captured Beijing and intruded into Central Asia. In Europe too, he left behind vestiges of terror. Genghis Khan caused the collapse of many cultural centers of his time, and established an empire of immense dimensions, which, alas, only survived for a short period of time.

The first and third parts of Kees Vlak’s music depict the attack of the mounted Mongol armies, as they were the backbone to make Mongolia become a gigantic empire within a very short span of time.
As a contrast, the middle section is written in quasi-Oriental musical language in order to describe the Central Asian cultural centers which were conquered during the aggressive wars of Genghis Khan.