From February 16 to 19, 2023, the second edition of FestiVita! Brussels Early Music Festival takes place at the Cercle Royal Gaulois in Brussels's Warandepark. With sixteen performances spread over four days, this festival is the opportunity to enjoy the richness and magic of early music. Both the true music lover and the untrained ear will find what they're looking for, thanks to a varied program with plenty of premieres. FestiVita! brings a successful mix of musicological research with great openness to today's performers. This year the thematic thread running through the festival is the 'Grand tour européen'. A novelty during this edition are the five young ensembles who will present the fruits of their research through short performances on the "Première" stage.
"FestiVita! brings a broad repertoire with music from the late Middle Ages to the early modern period. In doing so, we always try to stay close to the musical practices of that time, an approach that is characteristic of early music," explains flutist and festival organizer Michel Keustermans. "We play on historical instruments and respect the style, tempo and gestures of the time. It is a very different experience from a contemporary performance on modern instruments. It is primarily about a process of opening up." In the Cercle Gaulois, you can hear works by Joseph Haydn and Ludwig van Beethoven performed – by candlelight! – on the pianoforte by Petra Somlai (17.02, 22.45).
For this second edition of the young festival, the program takes the theme of the 'Grand tour européen' as its starting point, which is the educational journey through the continent that Baroque composers undertook. An extensive description of this tradition was drawn up by English composer Charles Burney (1726-1814), one of the founders of modern musicology. During the 'Banquet-qu'on-sert', the audience can take a small journey through time with a gastronomic concert. The menu is drawn from 18th-century Italy and the five courses are interspersed with musical intermezzos from the same period (19.02, 12.00). But that is not the only premiere. FestiVita! also invites five young ensembles to present the results of their research into early music. They do this in the form of a framed miniconcert on the "Première" stage (18.02, 14.00).
The opening concert Mon Amant de Saint-Jean by the ensemble Le Poème Harmonique is – entirely in line with the festival – intended for a broad audience. Together with French soprano Isabelle Druet, second prize winner of the Queen Elisabeth Competition 2008, the ensemble injects a dose of 1920s madness into the music of Monteverdi and his contemporaries (February 16, 20.30). Music lovers can enjoy the world premiere of Les Cris by the ensemble InAlto and soprano Alice Foccroule, conducted by cornet player Lambert Colson. In Les Cris an attempt is made to set the murmur of medieval markets to music, as Clément Janequin did as well.
Also a world premiere is La Gloria e Imeneo in which lesser-known work by Antonio Vivaldi is brought by the ensemble Les Muffatti and accompanied by mezzo-soprano Coline Dutilleul and countertenor Clint Van der Linde. This sumptuous serenade, composed for the wedding of Louis XV in the gardens of the French embassy in Venice, illustrates the important diplomatic role that music could play (17.02, 20.45).
Those who like cross-over music can look forward to the concert of the Berlage Saxophone Quartet. This quartet, which was founded in 2008 in Amsterdam, specializes in arrangements of chamber music specifically for saxophone. Their performance of the Goldberg Variations, written for harpsichord by Johann Sebastian Bach, combines great virtuosity with the full, warm sound of brass instruments (18.02, 22.30).
Early music is a world unto itself, with its own emphases and specific gestures and dances. During the Renaissance ball you can get to know that world better. Dance master Lieven Baert introduces the audience to historical choreographies and is accompanied musically by the orchestra of early music students from the Royal Conservatoire of Brussels. This is a not-to-be-missed part of the festival!