Animato Kwartet & Jelmer de Moed: Brahms’ Clarinet Quintet

Clarinet Trio

Wind Quintet

CHAMBER CONCERT: Brass Quintet

Featuring works by Johann Sebastian Bach, George Frideric Handel, Kevin McKee, Leonard Bernstein and others.From our brass quintet’s music cabinet! Compositions for brass chamber ensemble were a rarity in Bach and Handel's day. It was not until the late 19th century that the brass band emerged, becoming particularly popular in America. This new trend meant that the previously neglected brass players were finally able to shine in works written especially for them. Our quintet has unearthed a range of exciting arrangements and breathtaking originals for this entertaining chamber concert – featuring roses without thorns, trees that fall in love, and horses made of steel!

Chamber concert: Piano quintet

This programme is inspired by a world of romantic feelings: Brahms had been tinkering with the composition of a quintet since 1862 – at a time when he was continually fragile due to failures and said despondently: »When you go on 30 and feel weak like I do, you like to lock yourself up and look at the walls in your sadness«. Nevertheless, he became self-confident, exercised, learned Latin and felt, »I'm growing!« Moreover, the Hamburg-born composer moved to his adopted home of Vienna, where he lived near the Prater and could drink his wine »where Beethoven used to drink it«. In 1864, he finally finished the piano quintet, about which his soulmate Clara Schumann raved: »I feel after the work as if I had read a great tragic story.« The remarkable composition captivates with a plethora of original thoughts that are artfully developed – it is also filled with a profound seriousness in long parts. Elgar‘s moving piano quintet also bears witness to a similar state of mind: it was composed in 1918/19 at a time when his life was overshadowed by worries, illnesses, fears and the loss of loved ones in the wake of the horrors of war. Despite his great fame in London, the highly sensitive composer retreated to the countryside to find a break from the world's noise – to which he soon had nothing more to say in music: he wrote only a few works, such as the piano quintet. Even though it sounds at times belligerently agitated, a gloomy mood and a sheer overwhelming nostalgia spreads again and again as a witness to his broken soul – after all, he noted at the time: »Everything comforting and hopeful in my life is irretrievably over«.

Chamber concert: String quintet

Attention: Change of programme and line-up

Echo Rising Stars with clarinet

With phenomenal attention to both detail and musical entirety, Carlos Ferreira has positioned himself as one of the most exciting young clarinet stars. In fierce competition, he clinched the coveted soloist prize at the 2021 Mecklenburg Festival, and after serving as alternate principal clarinetist in the Monte Carlo Philharmonic Orchestra, he has now been appointed as principal clarinetist in the prestigious Orchestre National de France.Alongside Portuguese pianist and composer Pedro Emanuel Pereira, he presents a diverse programme on his Rising Stars tour, ranging from Leonard Bernstein's Sonata and Joseph Horovitz's warm-hearted and entertaining Sonatina for Clarinet and Piano, to music by participating pianist Pereira and French composer Charles-Marie Widor.Additionally, there's a brand-new piece by Chinese composer Lanqing Ding, commissioned by ECHO in collaboration with Casa da Música Porto, Fundação Gulbenkian Lisbon, and The Sage Gateshead – which also nominated Carlos Ferreira for Rising Stars.Rising Stars is a unique and forward-looking collaboration between 24 of Europe’s leading concert halls, all members of the European Concert Hall Organisation (ECHO). A handful of young musicians and ensembles from various countries are selected each year and given the opportunity to tour the concert halls and perform before international audiences. Experience shows that those who are selected as Rising Stars also have internationally successful careers.

Ensemble Tamuz: Schubert's String Quintet

The Sunday Morning Concert brings you wonderful and much-loved compositions, performed by top musicians from the Netherlands and abroad. Enjoy the most beautiful music in the morning! You can make your Sunday complete by enjoying a delicious post-concert lunch in restaurant LIER.The Royal Concertgebouw is one of the best concert halls in the world, famous for its exceptional acoustics and varied programme. Attend a concert and have an experience you will never forget. Come and enjoy inspiring music in the beautiful surroundings of the Main Hall or the intimate Recital Hall.

Chamber concert: Cello, Clarinet and Piano

In 1774, the encyclopaedia »Allgemeine Theorie der Schönen Künste« (General Theory of the Fine Arts) stated that only someone could compose trios »who combined all parts of art with a fruitful and lively imagination, and exercised himself to feel every trait of a character or passion musically and to articulate it in tones«. Our concert brings together three trios by composers who truly had what it takes. Although Brahms actually told his publisher in 1890 that it was »certainly time to go«, his creative energy came back and he composed the clarinet trio op. 114 a year later. Turned in on themselves and almost withdrawn, the instruments engage in a quiet dialogue here, loosened only by the two middle movements. A friend of Brahms said: »It is as if the instruments loved one another.« Clarinet, cello and piano are also musical soulmates in Beethoven‘s trio: According to one critic, they made »quite a good ensemble« in 1799. This popular Opus 11 was named the »Gassenhauer-Trio« (popular song trio) because the fiery opening movement and the heartfelt Adagio are followed by an entertaining finale for which Beethoven adopted a popular catchy tune – from Joseph Weigl‘s opera »L‘amor marinaro« (»The Corsair of Love«). However, the fact that too great feelings can also cause suffering is dealt with in Glinka‘s trio, which he prefaced in 1832 with the motto: »I have only experienced love through the pain it causes!« The emotional work seems like an expression of mental anguish set to music: Although the composer was living a carefree life in Italy at the time, the trio reveals the darker side – unhappy love affairs as well as physical ailments, so much so that one musician called out in dismay after the premiere: »What despair!«

Kammermusikfest! »Brahms«

Aris Quartett is a string quartet.