KlaraFestival: classical music strikes back

The message from the prophets of doom is still the same: the classical-music business – insular and decaying – is, they say, as good as dead. Well, the tenth edition of the KlaraFestival strikes back. Six adventurous highlights.

Sounds of Our Time
Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra Amsterdam, David Roberstons (dir.) & Lang Lang (piano)
There are at least four good reasons not to miss this concert. One: the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra is one of those great orchestras that you have to experience live at least once in your life. Two: Kris Defoort’s Human Voices Only is being given its Belgian premiere. Although his “classical” oeuvre could, in a manner of speaking, be counted on the fingers of one hand, the Brussels jazzman was commissioned to write a new work by the greatest orchestra in the Netherlands. Defoort, moreover, is artist in residence of this Birthday Edition of the festival, with no fewer than three concerts. Three: if you like spectacle, then the Chinese keyboard wizard Lang Lang is your man, in Ravel’s jazzy Piano Concerto. And four: this is the festive opening event of the festival, with lots of bells, whistles, and celebrities.
15/3, 20.00, €30/84 /120/144, Bozar


Dreams of the Orient
Le Concert des Nations & Jordi Savall
Honour where honour is due: the literary scholar Edward Said’s groundbreaking Orientalism (1978) alerted the “West” to the clichéd way in which the “East” had been presented for centuries. That East (and, by extension, other non-European cultures) was for a long time a versatile but enduring canvas on which all sorts of fantasies and expectations (harems! Sensual women! Barbarians! Strange rituals!) could grow and flourish. This concert draws on the extensive programme of Jordi Savall’s double CD Orient-Occident, with music by Jean-Philippe Rameau – enter Turks, Persians, and even Incas and Indians – and the 18^th-century “Belgian” composer André-Modeste Grétry (Savall presents extracts from Grétry’s comic opera La Caravane du Caire).
18/3, 20.00, €16/38/50/66, Bozar


Arthur
B’Rock & Cappella Amsterdam
What does centuries-old music, such as that of the Baroque era, mean to today’s public? One of the KlaraFestival’s raisons d’être is that it tries to come up with answers to that question. The festival is not afraid to take a fresh look at how the concert ritual – with its fixed programme, form, content, and sequence – can be transformed into something new. This new production, Arthur is a good demonstration of the fact that experimentation doesn’t necessarily mean that the public stays away. Peter Verhelst has transposed the libretto of Purcell’s semi-opera King Arthur to the (battle)fields of Flanders during the First World War. With the involvement of the adventurous folk of Theater Transparant and B’Rock, this will surely be a memorable piece of music theatre.
19 > 21/3, 20.15, SOLD OUT!, Flagey

Darkness & Light
Bernard Foccroulle & Lynette Wallworth
Bernard Foccroulle, the former director of De Munt/La Monnaie and now head of the festival of Aix-en-Provence, is also an active organist. Over recent years, he has recorded, among other material, the complete works for organ of JS Bach and Dietrich Buxtehude; he also teaches at the Brussels Conservatory. The organ is inseparable from Christian liturgy and the vast bulk of its repertoire has been written for various religious services. This world premiere once more shows the KlaraFestival’s sense of adventure, as Foccroulle undertakes an amazing survey of six centuries of the instrument’s repertoire. The music is juxtaposed with an installation by the Australian video artist Lynette Wallworth.
17/3, 20.00, €28, Sint-Michiels- en Sint-Goedelekathedraal/Cathédrale Saints Michel et Gudule


European Gala Concert: Mahler 4
Vladimir Jurowski & Mahler Chamber Orchestra
If you were lucky enough to attend last year’s impressive KlaraFestival concerts by the Mahler Chamber Orchestra, conducted by the radical Teodor Currentzis, you undoubtedly bought tickets for this concert long ago. The ensemble, which has gradually come to be part of the festival’s “musical family”, has come up with an irresistible programme that includes a poignant musical lament by the contemporary Serbian composer Marko Nikodijevic and excerpts from Gustav Mahler’s orchestral lied cycle Des Knaben Wunderhorn. The soloists are the Belgian soprano Sophie Karthäuser and the outstanding Canadian baritone Gerald Finley. Can music change your life? In Mahler’s intoxicating Fourth Symphony, this orchestra and this conductor will set out to do just that.
25/3, 20.00, €20/44/64/84, Bozar


Club Midi
Club Midi is something between a conversation and a concert, with guests sitting on a sofa and later performing music. Leading Belgian and foreign musicians (including the pianists Kris Defoort and Nelson Goerner, the harpist Anouk Sturtewagen, the sopranos Lore Binon and Claron McFadden, the accordionist Tuur Florizoone, the composer and conductor Frank Agsteribbe, and the tenor Julian Prégardien) will be interrogated by the oboist Piet Van Bockstal and the soprano Liesbeth Devos. About the (usually nomadic) life of a musician, the music they perform, conductors, and composers – in short, stories and anecdotes about music and musicians. At once a fascinating insight into the music world and a foretaste of the evening concerts. An ideal way to spend your lunch break!
Monday > Friday 12.00, Muntpunt, free


KLARAFESTIVAL • 15 > 29/3, verschillende locaties/divers lieux/various locations, www.klarafestival.be