Janine Jansen & Amsterdam Sinfonietta: Vivaldi’s The Four Seasons

Vivaldi's Four Seasons

The Concertgebouw’s famous Main Hall is one of the best concert halls in the world, well-known for its exceptional acoustics and special atmosphere. In the Main Hall, you will feel history. Here, Gustav Mahler conducted his own compositions, as did Richard Strauss and Igor Stravinsky. Sergei Rachmaninoff played his own piano concertos in the Main Hall. This is also where musicians such as Leonard Bernstein, Vladimir Horowitz and Yehudi Menuhin gave legendary performances. Right up to now, the Main Hall offers a stage to the world’s best orchestras and musicians. Buy your tickets now and experience the magic of the Main Hall for yourself!

Classical Evergreen: The Four Seasons

The album Dark Side of the Moon by Pink Floyd is one of the most popular musical works of the 20th century. It stayed almost sixteen years on the Billboard magazine list, which collects the two hundred most bought and listened to recordings in the USA in a given week. In the world of popular music, the British band remains unsurpassed. So perhaps a worthy rival should be sought in musical scores and concert performances? Who has not listened at least once to Mozart's Eine Kleine Nachtmusik or Beethoven's Fifth Symphony?Among the classical evergreens, however, Vivaldi's Four Seasons remains unrivalled. The popular violin concertos have received over a thousand recordings, one of which (Nigel Kennedy, 1986) has sold three million copies. They have also been played in at least five hundred films and undergone myriad remixes, the most popular of which is that by Max Richter, and perhaps the oldest was written by Bach himself. It is hard to believe that back in the 1940s, only some people remembered the then more than two-hundred-year-old works. Several pioneering recordings produced shortly afterwards made it clear to the world that no one could talk about feelings associated with atmospheric phenomena more beautifully than the Red Priest in the age of mass phonography and synthesisers. And yet, The Four Seasons is only just being rediscovered thanks to the exploration of historical performance. We wonder if the Red Priest would enjoy the A.D. 2025 version of {oh!} Orkiestra... Michał MendykConcert duration: approximately 90 minutes

Janine Jansen / Denis Kozhukhin

The duo formed by Janine Jansen and Denis Kozhukhin in a programme juxtaposing Brahms—a composer particularly close to their hearts—with a selection of 20th-century French chamber music.

The Four Seasons - An ode to nature by Floris Kortie (Dutch Spoken)

The SummerConcerts powered by VriendenLoterij present two months of wonderful concerts, from classical to jazz and from pop music to film scores. Top musicians from the Netherlands and around the world bring you all your favourite classical pieces, as well as tributes to Leonard Cohen and The Beatles, and all your favourite film music.We also present a host of young talent in our summer concerts, including youth orchestras from South Africa and Turkey, and top young classical soloists. After many of the concerts, we offer a meet-and-greet with the artists in an informal setting, or an afterparty with DJ in the Entrance Hall. In one of the world’s finest concert halls, there’s something for everyone this summer at The Concertgebouw!

The Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie Bremen / Janine Jansen / Paavo Järvi

A proven dream team: Paavo Järvi and »his« Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie Bremen have blended an intensive artistic collaboration for a long time. They are especially at home at the interface between the classical and the romantic with the music of Ludwig van Beethoven and his successors. At the Hamburg International Music Festival, they are now exclusively pursuing this soundscape. Together with star violinist Janine Jansen, they dive into Beethoven’s monumental violin concerto and present it with an equally ground-breaking symphony by Franz Schubert. Beethoven conceived his violin concerto as an alternative to stark virtuoso pieces without acrobatics or cliched melodies. With its epic scale of just under three quarters of an hour and an aura of philosophical profundity, this work has been spellbinding to this day and presents violinists with the highest demands of musical shaping. In expression, the music penetrates very far into the intensity of romantic worlds of emotions and so builds a bridge to the music of Franz Schubert. Schubert’s »Tragic« does not skimp on dramatic moments, but in the fiery finale ultimately brings itself to a cheerful conclusion.

Biennale »Paradise lost?« “The Four Seasons” with the Freiburger Barockorchester

Klaus Mäkelä and Janine Jansen with the Concertgebouw Orchestra

Conductor Klaus Mäkelä says that a concert is like a journey through time. The composers featured on this programme were clearly inspired by older music. Robert Schumann had just suffered a nervous breakdown when he wrote his Second Symphony, a work in which he documents his recovery and overtly draws on the music of Bach, Haydn and Beethoven.Benjamin Britten’s music, in which the influence of older English masters is always palpable, is also in dialogue with the past. His Violin Concerto juxtaposes tradition with present-day circumstances: the year was 1939, and the threat of war imminent. With her extraordinary aptitude for capturing mood and atmosphere, violinist Janine Jansen is the perfect interpreter.Klaus Mäkelä says, ‘In Schumann’s music I always feel an aspect of the past, tradition, history. Britten too admired tradition. We make a combination with works from the 17th century by Purcell and Dowland, to prepare the atmosphere of the later works by Britten and Schumann, which contain the past. I think the music benefits from it. The cathedral-like, almost sacred atmosphere of Dowland and Purcell enhances those aspects in Schumann and Britten, putting their works in a different light.’

Klaus Mäkelä and Janine Jansen with the Concertgebouw Orchestra

Conductor Klaus Mäkelä says that a concert is like a journey through time. The composers featured on this programme were clearly inspired by older music. Robert Schumann had just suffered a nervous breakdown when he wrote his Second Symphony, a work in which he documents his recovery and overtly draws on the music of Bach, Haydn and Beethoven.Benjamin Britten’s music, in which the influence of older English masters is always palpable, is also in dialogue with the past. His Violin Concerto juxtaposes tradition with present-day circumstances: the year was 1939, and the threat of war imminent. With her extraordinary aptitude for capturing mood and atmosphere, violinist Janine Jansen is the perfect interpreter.Klaus Mäkelä says, ‘In Schumann’s music I always feel an aspect of the past, tradition, history. Britten too admired tradition. We make a combination with works from the 17th century by Purcell and Dowland, to prepare the atmosphere of the later works by Britten and Schumann, which contain the past. I think the music benefits from it. The cathedral-like, almost sacred atmosphere of Dowland and Purcell enhances those aspects in Schumann and Britten, putting their works in a different light.’