Highlights

Who wouldn’t want to travel with Marco Polo, who left for China in 1271 and didn’t return to Venice until 24 years later? Listen to the music the explorers heard along the Silk Road at that time. A highly cosmopolitan mix: from the Mediterranean and the Middle East to the Far East. The international company, led by oud player Kyriakos Kalaitzidis, is making its Amsterdam debut!

The Canadian ensemble Constantinople and En Chordais, based in Thessaloniki, have made a name for themselves worldwide with their adventurous, cross-cultural approach to music. This truly unique road movie features classical Chinese music, Persian court music, Mongolian melodies, Sufi sounds from the Pamir Mountains, Byzantine melos, and music from Venice. The backgrounds of the musicians are just as colourful.

In collaboration with Ud Festival

Programme booklet (Dutch)

They have a Dutch name, but they come from France: Quatuor Van Kuijk. In the Netherlands, the young quartet is not very well known yet, but no doubt this is about to change. Their recent albums with Mendelssohn’s complete string quartets have been showered with praise. Tonight at the Muziekgebouw, the Van Kuijk Quartet takes listeners on a captivating journey through French music. The programme features iconic 20th-century composers in dialogue with the contemporary voice of Baptiste Trotignon.

Trotignon is a jazz pianist and composer who cares little about genre boundaries – he knows his classics, but also plays songs by Led Zeppelin and David Bowie. In his new Ces messieurs (‘These gentlemen’) for the Van Kuijk, Trotignon gives a salute to France’s great impressionists, such as Claude Debussy, Gabriel Fauré, and Erik Satie. The Van Kuijk also plays pieces by the gentlemen themselves, as found on their latest CD, Impressions Parisiennes. They top it off with Ravel’s phenomenal String Quartet in F (1903), which won the admiration of Debussy – and many others.

'Style, energy and a sense of risk. These four young Frenchmen made the music smile' - The Guardian

This concert will be recorded to be broadcast later by NTR on NPO Klassiek

The name Handel and the Christmas season are intrinsically linked in the minds of many, mainly because of his iconic Messiah. However, this German composer wrote more Christmas gems in his younger years. The unparalleled Vox Luminis brings four dazzling works by a young Handel, brimming with Italian flair. A festive and joyous Christmas concert featuring the radiant French soprano Devillers as soloist in Laudate Pueri. Dixit Dominus already made a big impression in Handel’s time. Vox Luminis’ performance of it is ‘simply exquisite: tangy, ineffable and beautifully controlled’, wrote Gramophone.

For more than two decades, the Belgian ensemble Vox Luminis has delighted audiences with captivating productions. Though vocal works of the 17th and early 18th centuries remain their focus, the ensemble has impressively expanded with a top-notch orchestra. Vox Luminis’ name in ‘is enough in itself to spark a tingle of anticipation’, wrote Gramophone about the award-winning ensemble. 

South Korean pianist Yeol Eum Son is a great master of the classical repertoire. But she also likes surprising concert programmes – as recently as 2023, she made a deep impression at the Muziekgebouw with jazzy Ukrainian and Russian music. This time, she plays works by six composers who were all celebrated virtuoso pianists in their time. A recipe for pianistic fireworks, with Rachmaninoff’s epic Preludes Op. 32 serving as the grand finale.

From the swinging cycle Play Piano Play by Friedrich Gulda to the warm-blooded transcriptions that Earl Wild made of Disney’s Snow White, Yeol Eum Son lets her audience go from one surprise to the next. Did you know that among the treasures left behind by the great Alicia de Larrocha is a delightful Sonata Antigua? And that fin-de-siècle star Ignacy Jan Paderewski was the president of Poland in 1919? Yeol Eum Son’s hyper-musical interpretations promise once again to deliver a concert experience that is both exhilarating and unforgettable.

‘This is how it should sound’, wrote magazine Luister about Música Temprana’s recording of the Misa Criolla. The twenty-five-year-old ensemble hit the nail on the head and received the maximum score of 10 for this Latin American mass by Ariel Ramírez, which is now synonymous with Christmas. The other songs on the programme also bring a delightful exploration of folk music traditions, each adding warmth and passion to the Christmas atmosphere.

The Misa Criolla is a masterpiece by composer Ariel Ramírez. He wrote the work in 1964 for two German nuns who had once given him shelter. The Vatican’s permission to use vernacular mass settings inspired him to create this vibrant work, in which the Spanish language and Latin American folk music take centre stage. The mass blossomed into a celebration of life, now performed worldwide during Christmas festivities.