Collegium Vocale Gent & Het Collectief olv. Reinbert de Leeuw

Leos Janácek was not an average man. His choral music, far too rarely performed, swarms with invention, individuality and eccentric ideas. Where else have you come across an ensemble consisting of a chorus, flutes, bassoons, clarinet, bass, piano, ocarina and toy drum? In the ‘Ríkadla’ (children’s songs) he uses this ensemble to write songs for the wedding of a beet or about a truly lethargic mole. ‘It was for a laugh’, said this seventy-year-old master. In the playful ‘Concertino’ he lives it up just as much with animals, children and woods. Yet it is not only humour that makes these scores successful. It is very beautifully written music in which folk elements fuse seamlessly with a virtuoso command of form. There is always seriousness behind the laughter. Especially the painful awareness that children bring into our lives the inevitability of parting. Nowhere is this more moving than in ‘Elegy for the death of my daughter Olga’.

As we would expect, Reinbert de Leeuw will use every means to uphold this music. And being so generous, he will also treat us to his own brilliant orchestration of the ‘Sonata 1.X.1905’. An evening for music-loving connoisseurs.