Santtu-Matias Rouvali stands in for Riccardo Chailly on 3, 4 and 6 March

Dear visitor,

At the press conference held yesterday evening, it became clear that the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra will again be able to play to full houses starting from Friday 25 February. We are delighted to be able to welcome you to the concerts on 3, 4 and 6 March with no restrictions. With this email, we wish to inform you of a change to the programme performed on these concerts.

Conductor emeritus Riccardo Chailly greatly regrets having had to cancel the concerts. Maestro Chailly has stated that, owing to the pandemic, he wishes to focus entirely on his work at La Scala in view of his responsibilities as artistic director. He will return to the Concertgebouw Orchestra in the 2022–23 season.

The orchestra is grateful that Finnish conductor Santtu-Matias Rouvali is able to stand in at short notice. The special programme performed on these three concerts remains largely unchanged: Santtu-Matias Rouvali will be leading the orchestra in Henriëtte Bosmans’s Concertstuk for violin and orchestra with the orchestra’s leader Vesko Eschkenazy as soloist and in Dmitry Shostakovich’s Symphony No. 12. The concert opens with Finlandia by Rouvali’s compatriot, Sibelius (rather than Zemlinsky’s Sinfonietta). 

It is the third time that the Finnish conductor will lead the orchestra, following his very compelling first appearance in January 2020 and the concert he led featuring Sibelius’s Sixth and Seventh Symphonies in December 2021, a performance which garnered great public and critical acclaim.

We wish you a very enjoyable concert!

Kind regards,

Wietske Kuiper

Marketing and Sales Manager

Works by Bosmans and Shostakovich rehabilitated

The Concertgebouw Orchestra had close ties for many years with the composer and pianist Henriëtte Bosmans (b. 1895, d. 1952). Since its world premiere in 1935, conducted by Willem Mengelberg and featuring the orchestra’s then leader Louis Zimmerman as soloist, her Concertstuk for violin and orchestra has been performed seven additional times, yet not since 1951. That’s why it’s high time the work be reincorporated into the orchestra’s repertoire.

Shostakovich’s rarely performed Symphony No. 12 (‘The Year 1917’) also deserves to be reflected on and reassessed. The controversial work is an ode to the Russian Revolution and is often dismissed as a sign of deference to the Soviet regime. As is always the case with Shostakovich, however, the story behind the music is far more nuanced than we might expect. The Concertgebouw Orchestra has never performed the work in concert, but did record it once (for Decca) under the baton of Bernard Haitink during his tenure as chief conductor.