Festival 20·21, music of the 20th and 21st centuries TRANSIT, festival of contemporary music 12 September to 26 October 2024 in Leuven
From the very beginning in 1994, when Festival 20·21 was still called 'Festival van Vlaams-Brabant' and later 'Novecento', it was the intention of festival director prof. em. Mark Delaere to bring not merely 'beautiful music in the finest performances' to the people but to continually seek coherence and meaning. Because the current artistic leaders Pieter Bergé (20·21) and Maarten Beirens (Transit) also like to weave connections between the works performed, it often seems as if each concert programme is a composition in itself. The audience knows that it will mainly hear music from after 1900, but opening with Schönberg, we don't see many festivals do that, faut le faire. 20·21, which traditionally opens together with the academic year of the university city, wants to celebrate its thirtieth birthday in rather modest fashion according to its own account. What is certain, however, is that the meanwhile spoiled concert audience will leave enriched once again. 150 – 100
Is it because the two festivals 20.21 and Transit themselves have birthdays, but it is striking that this edition pays greater attention to composers' anniversaries. Two important and perhaps still little-known 150-year-olds they did not want to leave out. That is why the series opens exceptionally before the start of the academic year on 13 September, precisely on Arnold Schönberg's birthday (1874). The godfather of the American avant-garde Charles Ives was born shortly after in that same great vintage year 1874. The 'prelude concert' becomes an adventurous Viennese-American diptych, supplemented with Anton Webern, Henry Cowell, Frederic Rzewski and Ferruccio Busoni who died 100 years ago. A connoisseur of this repertoire and friend of the festival is pianist Daan Vandewalle.
Because the Ives specialist par excellence and author of Listening to Charles Ives. Variations on His America prof. em. Peter Burkholder happens to be in our country in September for a congress on music after 1900, the festival even opens a day earlier. On 12 September, Burkholder, who has made Ives his life's work, gives a lecture in which he warms up the listener and prepares them to truly listen with 'open mind, open ears' to perhaps the most idiosyncratic and radical composer in music history.
Is this the man of thousand thrones who strew'd our earth with hostile bones and can he thus survive?Two weeks later, on 26 September, the 150-year-old Schönberg is heard again in the piano quintet Ode to Napoleon Buonaparte, in which the Jewish composer in 1942 from the US provides sarcastically personal commentary on events in Europe that he has fled. The cutting words from Lord Byron's poem of the same name that Schönberg set to music will not be sung but rather rhythmically declaimed by none other than Dietrich Henschel. Trio Khaldei, expanded with Tony Nys (viola) and Maximilian Lohse (violin) not only open the concert but also conclude it with Ode to Napoleon. Knowing that you will hear a piece twice can bring a special concert experience and offers the opportunity to delve deeper into a work. At the second performance you might focus on different parameters than at the first, more general listening. Perhaps we will experience how variable listening to a work can be, for can we ever cross the same musical river twice? In between, parts of Beethoven's Eroica are heard in an arrangement for piano quintet by Ferdinand Ries and the Piano Quartet by Aaron Copland. Praise and Horror for an authoritarian leader, in one breath. Having a birthday also means looking back at what has been good. For the 'real' opening concert on 23 September, the start of the academic year, the festival – to the delight of those who were there then – returns to a sharply flavoured programme from 2018 when composer Daan Janssens at the festival's request arranged Schubert's song cycle Die schöne Müllerin for a larger ensemble. Schubert remains untouched but in Janssens' Eine schöne Müllerin the melodies are given a rich, contemporary sonic world. At appropriate moments he adds his own intermezzos on texts by Fernando Pessoa from the Book of Restlessness. The CD recording that Spectra under Filip Rathé made in the meantime with tenor Thomas Blondelle (in 2018 Thomas E. Bauer sang) is presented on the day of the concert. A treasured item, both for the original musical content and for the design entrusted to visual dramaturg Lise Bruyneel who has been responsible for the visual aspect of 20·21 for years. [embed]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RYIY7A_5iBE[/embed] EINE SCHÖNE MÜLLERIN by Daan Janssens recording of the premiere in 2018 with Thomas E. Bauer 65 - 25 Whoever can write one sonata can just as well write 24, composer Frank Nuyts must have thought. With his well-known abundance of energy and ideas, he has over the years breathed contemporary life into the venerable piano sonata. In the wake of Mozart, Haydn, Beethoven and Schubert he wrote 24 virtuosic and sparkling sonatas tailored to different pianists. On Transit, which by the way also celebrates 25 years, Elisa Medinilla, Jan Michiels and Barbara Baltussen play sonatas 8, 16 and 24 written especially for them. Who knows, that might turn out to be a self-portrait concert? In any case, Leuven is hosting with a two-year delay a celebration of Frank Nuyts' 65th birthday, who knows that COVID-19 can have long-lasting effects. Those who want to experience the complete cycle of 24 sonatas by 18 different performers, each with a unique introduction by the composer, must go to Quatre Mains in Ghent in the last weekend of September. 20 For Malaysian composer Kee-Yong Chong, this edition of 20·21 is a form of homecoming. Having just graduated from the Brussels Conservatoire with Jan Van Landeghem and Daniel Capelletti, in the early years of Transit he had the opportunity to present a Belgian creation. On 19 October, Chong returns to Leuven as one of the leading composers from Southeast Asia with a creation commissioned by the festival. [caption id="attachment_33338" align="aligncenter" width="650"]
© Chantal De Waele[/caption]
EX NIHILO
Ex Nihilo, is not only the title of the concert with Brecht Valckenaers on 15 October,
ex nihilo is also the way the festival works. With the exception of Grain de la Voix who on 30 September present a musical collage around the Messe de Notre Dame by Guillaume de Machaut, all concert programmes this time too have emerged 'from scratch' and slowly matured following an exchange of ideas between the performers and the organisers. Creating a coherent concert programme often requires much ink to flow and many emails to be exchanged. The same applies to the collage concert Ex Nihilo around music by György Ligeti.
When 20·21 and especially Transit send out their brochures in spring, much of the music mentioned in them has not even been written yet. As you read this, Brecht Valckenaers is still writing or revising the interludes for the Ligeti concert. In 1951, the Romanian-Hungarian Ligeti was a young composer of 27 who was completely stuck and wanted to reinvent his musical language. What could he do with a single note? With a single interval? With certain rhythmic principles? In the search, the piano work of eleven pieces Musica Ricercata emerged. Pianist-composer Brecht Valckenaers, who is a few years younger than Ligeti was then, works out this music further, extends it to become a full concert programme with both five of his own interludes and five connecting fragments by Lachenmann, Kurtag, Crumb, Cowell and Bartók.
In 1951 I began to experiment with very simple structures of rhythms and sonorities as if to build up a 'new music' from nothing. What can I do with a single note? With its octave? With an interval? With two intervals? With certain rhythmic relationships? Györgi Ligeti.[embed]https://youtu.be/whCItqfiqYI[/embed] ! CELEBRATION ! The stage of the Soetezaal in STUK will be far too small, because for the first time in its history Transit presents a full symphony orchestra. 80 students from d'Academie Podium Sint-Niklaas perform both Dali's Dream? by Luc Brewaeys and the creation of Ropes by Belgian-Syrian composer Shalan-Alhamwy, a musician with roots from Homs to Ghent. Expect musical traditions ranging from Gnawa music from Morocco to Western Romanticism. The bagala, oud and percussion from the Middle East add extra color to the orchestra. [caption id="attachment_33299" align="alignleft" width="474"]
Woodcut by Conrad Felixmüller of the composer Erwin Schulhoff, Prague 1924. © Lindenau-Museum, Altenburg, VG Bild-Kunst.[/caption]
The most festive moment of the festival is reserved for the theme day on 13 October, which will exceptionally start at 13:30 due to the municipal elections and is this year dedicated to Czech masters Bohuslav Martinu, Leos Janáček and Erwin Schulhoff. Czech That! includes two concerts, one for strings and one for winds and percussion. The highlight will be the Dance of the philosophers, ballerinas, boxers, critics, parvenus, … in the satirical ballet Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme by Erwin Schulhoff, who reinterpreted Molière and Lully's would-be aristocrat in 1926. The festival, which always attaches great importance to a carefully calibrated visual component of the music, has engaged draughtswoman Gerda Dendooven for this production to perform with pen and pencil. Seven wind players from I Solisti and a battery of five percussionists disappear as much as possible in the orchestra pit, to leave the stage free for Dendooven's sets and to allow her to continue drawing on the spot. Will she perhaps engage with the political events of 13 October? A concert literally worth watching.
After the evening concert you are welcome in the foyer of the Stadsschouwburg to toast 30 beautiful years and to the continued future of Festival 20·21. And continue to dream out loud about the new Leuven concert hall, whose cornerstone has yet to be laid? In the meantime, you can discover the brand new hall at the Philipssite, modernistically furnished, easily accessible and very suitable for chamber music. You can test the acoustics when the Ragazze Quartet performs both Dvořák as well as two female American composers Ruth Crawford Seeger and Florence Price. Music From the New(est) World, on 3 October 2024.
Of course there is nothing wrong with letting yourself be carried away and simply enjoying so many carefully programmed concerts, though it is good to know that the creators have more in mind than just this. For artistic director Pieter Bergé "the concert hall is not a refuge to recover from overwhelming reality, it is a place to reflect on that reality and where multiple interpretations are possible."
For concerts, dates and tickets see the website