Fellow countryman and world-renowned pianist Julien Libeer is the festival artist of Festival Kortrijk 2023. During the Festival you can hear him perform three times. Each time in very different settings but with one golden thread: the great Johann Sebastian Bach.
"When everything around you changes, trembles and quivers, you best seek solid ground beneath your feet. Johann Sebastian Bach - coffee lover, father of twenty rascals and after hours also patriarch of Western music - spins a solid golden thread throughout Festival Kortrijk 2023.
In « A Well-Tempered Conversation » his iconic Well-Tempered Clavier enters into dialogue with his spiritual grandchildren - from Beethoven to Ligeti.
We confront his fifth French suite with Bartok's En plein air - a clash between revolutionaries on which Vincent Caers gets to unleash his algorithmic magic.
And his Concerto in D leads the closing concert. The Alma Quartet plays as an orchestra, and then takes the lead in Dutilleux and Franck.
In times of great confusion: keep calm and listen to Bach."
- Julien Libeer
A Well-Tempered Conversation
Friday 3 March - 12:30 - Concertstudio
In 1722 Johann Sebastian Bach, at that time a somewhat obscure music teacher from Cöthen, publishes a cycle of 24 preludes and fugues; Das Wohltemperierte Klavier. The 'Well-Tempered Clavier' turns out to be an encyclopedic concentrate of Bach's musical thinking and a milestone in Western music history. It is of endless beauty, and secured Bach a place beside Newton or Kant in the Western intellectual pantheon. No composer has failed to study the WTK over the past 300 years, even Paul McCartney counts among its admirers.
In A Well-Tempered Conversation Julien Libeer highlights this repertoire classic in an original way. During this lunchtime concert he pairs the pieces in major keys with a carefully chosen minor work by a later composer. Brahms, Ravel, Beethoven, Chopin, Rachmaninov, Ligeti and Schönberg pass in review in an illuminating and beautifully versatile mirror play.
Umbraphonics: a live premiere!
Saturday 4 March - from 17:00 - Muziekcentrum Track & De Kreun
During minifestival Night Air experimental and contemporary music gets a unique platform. Here we get to see Julien in a very different setting. Together with Vincent Caers he goes searching four-handed for the shadow side of Bach's and Bartok's piano scores. Not merely on one keyboard, but alongside the piano also on that of synthesizers, organs and controllers.
Tradition and experiment meet in an immersive soundworld that immerses the listener in both hushed beauty and dark soundscapes and explosive electronica. Discover during Night Air whether Umbraphonics makes you look directly at the sun or rather cast a glance at the dark side of the moon. It will be a fascinating journey in any case.
Closing concert: All's well that ends well
Sunday 5 March - 20:15 - Schouwburg Kortrijk
All's well that ends well. And how beautifully Festival Kortrijk will end this year! With Julien Libeer and the string quartet Alma Quartet on the stage of the Schouwburg we can enjoy a classical evening of the highest level. On the programme are the Piano Concerto in D by Bach, Ainsi La Nuit, the only string quartet that Dutilleux ever wrote, and finally the Piano Quintet by César Franck.
Alma Quartet, whose musicians all play in the Concertgebouworkest Amsterdam, has won various awards, including the Preis der deutschen Schallplattenkritik in 2017. The quartet has already performed in the Elbphilharmonie Hamburg, Konzerthaus Berlin, Muziekgebouw aan 't IJ Amsterdam and Sociedad Filarmónica de Bilbao. And now also in Schouwburg Kortrijk.