Audience members to sit with Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra musicians during concert

On 9, 10 and 12 February, the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra will play three very special concerts with honorary guest conductor Iván Fischer. For the concert on 9 February, the orchestra musicians will sit in the centre of the Main Hall, grouped around the conductor, with some of the audience interspersed among them. The rest of the audience will sit around the orchestra. On 10 and 12 February the orchestra will play on stage as usual. 

  

The Main Hall as time machine 

The programme for all three concerts is intimately connected with the history of The Concertgebouw and the Concertgebouw Orchestra. It includes a short work by each of the seventeen composers whose names are on the cartouches (name plates) lining the balcony in the Main Hall (another 29 names are on the walls above them). Since most of these names were added in the 1920s, the programme very much represents the Zeitgeist of a hundred years ago. As conductor Iván Fischer puts it, ‘It’s a time machine’. The pieces on the programme will be played in the order their composers’ names appear on the balconies, from right to left – from Dvořák to Stravinsky. Soprano Anna Prohaska will be the soloist in songs by Richard Strauss, Alphons Diepenbrock, Max Reger and Maurice Ravel.  

  

Some of these seventeen composers are still famous today. A movement from Anton Bruckner’s ‘Symphony No. 0’ in D Minor is on the programme, as well as Gustav Mahler­’s Blumine, which was originally a symphony movement. Other composers, such as Cornelis Dopper, Julius Röntgen and Bernard Zweers, are less familiar.  

 

The Major and Minor Composers Quiz 

What does Bruckner's Symphony No. 0 sound like? Who recognises music by Béla Bartók, Willem Pijper, Bernard Zweers or any of the other composers whose names adorn the balcony in the Main Hall of The Concertgebouw? Test your knowledge on the basis of music fragments in The Major and Minor Composers Quiz. From absolute beginner to expert, everyone can join in via concertgebouworkest.nl/en/quiz. 

  

Radio and video broadcasts/streams 

The concert on Sunday 12 February will be broadcast live by the AVROTROS network on NPO Klassiek (previously known as Radio 4). It will also be recorded by the new video streaming platform Symphony.live for broadcast on 25 March. 

  

Chamber-music programme 

Inspired by Iván Fischer’s cartouche-based programme in the Main Hall, musicians from the Concertgebouw Orchestra will play a chamber concert on 5 February in the Recital Hall. Part of the Close-up series, the concert features music by the twelve composers on that hall’s name plates.