Children’s music day 2023
There were secret sounds hidden in a mysterious little chest called the Sound Box. Host Lotte van Dijck welcomed everyone to the Amsterdamzaal (Amsterdam hall) and pointed at violinist Eke van Spiegel, who was asleep in a corner. ‘Shall we wake her up?’, she asked the children. She pulled a bunch of different instruments out of the Sound Box that made some surprising sounds. What ultimately woke Eke up was the flute, which made a noise like an old steam train’s whistle.
Eke played the violin, and showed her audience that the instrument has one, two, three, four strings. And she played so beautifully! Then Lotte brought out her guitar and had the children count the strings on their fingers, to show them that a guitar has not four strings, but six.
Lotte told the audience that there was a ‘little station’ at the other end of the hall. Together, the children formed a human train, and chugged over to the other side, where Actress Reineke Jonker was waiting for them. She read to them from the new storybook, Daantje Dirigentje en een verhaal van een viool, about a little girl who is a conductor and her adventures with a violin that comes to life.
Somewhere in an old, old house
lives Daantje Dirigentje [Daantje the conductor].
She talks and she works
and she plays and she sings
and she dances and she swings
with any instrument at all
whether it’s big or small...
When the story ended, pianist Jeroen Bal and Eke van Spiegel played two lullabies, and Lotte van Dijck, seeing all the yawning mums and dads in the hall, called it a day.
Zwitsal
From 16 through 29 January, the book was being given away free with the purchase of Zwitsal products at Kruidvat shops, as part of the upcoming National Reading Aloud Days (Nationale Voorleesdagen). This book is the first of a series of seven. The second book will feature a French horn, and will be available in bookshops starting in March.
Zwitsal is a division of Unilever, one of the Concertgebouw Orchestra’s three global partners in addition to ING and Booking.com.
Zwitsal aims to support parents of small children with their bedtime ritual, and the Concertgebouw Orchestra is introducing the very youngest listeners to classical music, so that the power of music can work its magic, taking kids from a hectic day to relaxation and a good night’s sleep, with classical lullabies.