With De Rozenkrans Sonates, Klassiek in de Kapel opened its 2026-2027 season in a sold-out Sint-Rochuskapel in Hoegaarden. Violinist Madoka Nakamaru and organist and harpsichordist Wouter Dekoninck placed the famous cycle by Heinrich Ignaz Franz Biber in a broader musical landscape, alongside works by Dietrich Buxtehude, Jan Pieterszoon Sweelinck and Johann Sebastian Bach. The result was more than a sequence of Baroque works: the programme made audible how different musical and religious worlds intersected in the 17th and early 18th centuries.
Biber was naturally the heart of the concert. His Rozenkrans Sonates rank among the most remarkable violin music of the 17th century. The cycle combines a distinctly religious background with exceptionally demanding violin technique. An essential part of this is the scordatura: for nearly every sonata the violin is tuned differently. As a result, not only the violinist's technical relationship to the instrument changes, but also its tonal colour.
Madoka Nakamaru brought this special world convincingly to life. Her playing united technical mastery with expressiveness, without burdening the music with excessive drama. In Biber this is especially important. The virtuosity is never mere ornamentation, but is constantly in the service of the character and religious meaning of the music. Nakamaru let the violin sing where possible and gave the more introspective passages the space they needed.
Opposite her stood Wouter Dekoninck, who gave the programme a second dimension from organ and harpsichord. With music by Buxtehude, Sweelinck and Bach, Biber was embedded in a broader Northern European tradition. The choice of composers was substantively interesting. Set against the Catholic world in which Biber's Rozenkrans Sonates were created stood the Lutheran tradition of Buxtehude and Bach, and the Calvinist environment in which Sweelinck worked.
That contrast was fortunately not imposed on the concert as a heavy concept. It was rather present in the background and revealed how much musical kinship existed across confessional boundaries. Dekoninck approached the various works with clarity and a sense of structure. Especially in this intimate chapel space, the organ could sound both powerful and surprisingly nuanced.
The collaboration between the two musicians was also convincing. Nakamaru and Dekoninck were not seeking effect for its own sake, but coherence. The violin could step into the foreground without the accompaniment being reduced to a merely supportive role. As a result, the music retained its transparency and a natural interplay arose between the two performers.
The Sint-Rochuskapel also proved a particularly suitable setting for this repertoire. Not only acoustically, but also in content, the historic space suited music so deeply intertwined with spirituality and liturgy. That a programme bringing together Catholic, Lutheran and Calvinist music was presented precisely here also fitted nicely with the season theme of Klassiek in de Kapel: "Exploring Borders with Music".
The concert also had a benefit character. Klassiek in de Kapel organised it for the benefit of the Friends of the Sint-Rochuskapel, who are committed to the management, maintenance and preservation of the chapel. That the available seats were completely sold out for the occasion gave this season opening an extra festive character.
De Rozenkrans Sonates thus became a successful start to the new season: thoughtfully conceived, stylistically refined, and carried by two musicians who did not try to make the music larger than it is, but let it speak precisely in its own language. And precisely because of that, Biber, in dialogue with Buxtehude, Sweelinck and Bach, was given every opportunity to convince in the Sint-Rochuskapel.