"There are chamber music festivals and there is Arte Amanti". That's how pianist Boris Kuznetzov sums up the twelve years since the start of Arte Amanti in 2009.
What began as a modest initiative to give young talents in classical music a platform and to organize concerts in smaller towns and municipalities, has grown after more than ten years into the International Chamber Music Festival Flanders, a major chamber music festival with dozens of concerts from Aalst to Zaventem, from Veurne to Maaseik... This year there were 39 concerts! In recent years, no fewer than 156 musicians have performed in 33 Flemish cities and municipalities. Too many to mention, sometimes still children, sometimes laureates of the Elisabeth Competition. On the Arte Amanti website, concerts for November are announced, later this year the program for spring 2023 will be released.
Arte Amanti not only gives young talents the chance to gain stage experience, but often famous names participate as well. Laureates of major international competitions and other big names. A wealth of concerts, top-notch performers, both in quantity and quality. On October 22, the Arte Amanti Fundraising concert 2022 took place at the Ghent Opera. As always, both young talents and established artists took the stage. This time it was pianist Sergei Redkin, second laureate of the Elisabeth Competition for piano 2021. The youngest talent, Akari Bastiaens, performed Ravel's Tombeau de Couperin. A marvel, for Akari is barely ten years old...
To organize such a festival year after year, you would think you need an entire team to maintain all the contacts, raise the necessary funds, plan concerts, etc. But no, because the entire organization is carried by just one person, Reinilde Leyers. She is a violinist with Opera Vlaanderen and since 2009 has managed to grow her festival like mushrooms in autumn. With a network of volunteers, local contacts and generous sponsors, her first festival after more than ten years has grown into the country's largest chamber music festival. In this way, she has made a dream come true, the dream of giving young people chances on stage, the dream of bringing classical chamber music closer to people, to smaller towns and municipalities throughout Flanders. With her conviction and determination, she has not only thrown a stone in the river, but moved mountains.
WHO: Arte Amanti
WHAT: up|BEAT Fundraising concert
WHERE: Opera Gent
WHEN: 22/10/2022