Brahms and Ligeti with Distant echoes from the 19th and 20th centuries

Distant echoes from the 19th and 20th centuries, the programme promises. With first-class performers: two Elisabeth competition laureates, one from the violin competition of 2019 and one from the piano competition of 1991. They are respectively Sylvia Huang and Jan Michiels. And then another talent, Anthony Devriendt, first horn with the National Orchestra of Belgium. And they bring a couple of rarely performed musical works by Johannes Brahms and György Ligeti. And that is immediately the hallmark of this Festival 20·21: the crossing of boundaries and time periods and confronting them with one another.

First a short piece of piano music by Brahms followed by an Etude by Ligeti. And then again an Intermezzo by Brahms and an Etude by Ligeti. A thoughtful Jan Michiels gives voice romantically to those Brahms pieces and lets that last note fade so beautifully into silence. Ligeti is contrasting, of course. Then that nimble-fingered pulsating rhythm of the Ligeti Etudes comes along, almost repetitive, almost mechanical, clenched and fleeting and with unexpected turns. But then comes the main course, Brahms Horn Trio. You get that surprisingly beautiful interplay and that unusual sonority of piano, violin and horn. Rare but not surprising when you know that Brahms himself played the horn.

A clever find to confront that piece later with Ligeti's Horn Trio. But first a moment to catch your breath and receive well-deserved applause for this truly wonderful experience: hearing a horn player so long and so intensely engaged with his instrument. That alone made it a unique experience. And the pianist and violinist? They were in their usual form and that means: excellent.

Then again a calm concentrated Jan Michiels with short piano pieces by those two innovative composers. And in that confrontation you sometimes seem to hear how close those composers, over a century apart, lie to each other with their piano playing, their exploration of the musical material. Finally that Horn Trio by Ligeti. All three together again, sometimes in unison, sometimes leading and accompanying one another but above all hearing that horn again in all its timbres, muted or not, now with seductive softness then again hunted and powerful, bright high and dark low. It was an extraordinary feat to make this Ligeti music comprehensible and listenable as a discovery.