Symfonieorkest Continuo is the alumni and staff orchestra of Ghent University. It stands alongside the Ghent University Symphony Orchestra (GUSO), which consists mainly of students.
With over ten thousand employees, UGent is not only the largest employer in the city, it also maintains several ensembles, alongside a choir and a concert band. Symfonieorkest Continuo rehearses weekly and performs two programs per year, with two concerts in January and two in June.
Opus 47
Continuo celebrates ten years this year. Since 2022 I have already listened to three concerts and an opera. It began ten years ago with a brainstorming session, with Klara Continuo in the background… The conductor Kevin Hendrickx has been there from the start. He is a chemist, lecturer at UGent, but also a professional conductor.
A Continuo concert is not only listening pleasure. There is always a concept, a title, and an extensive program booklet with beautiful layout. You don't see that often these days, even at concert halls like De Bijloke you get a sketchy program and have to make do with the QR code. The concept of these winter concerts is "opus 47". Both the Violin Concerto by Sibelius and the Fifth by Shostakovich have the opus number 47. A nice fact to connect very different compositions with each other. The speaker who introduces the program beforehand in a room is none other than composer Daan Janssens, who by the way performs as a viola player in the orchestra.
Lisa Jacobs
Dutch violinist Lisa Jacobs, born in 1985, performed as a soloist with the Concertgebouw orchestra under conductor Riccardo Chailly at the age of seventeen. She won prizes at international competitions, worked with major conductors, received many glowing reviews and teaches at the conservatories of The Hague and Ghent. It is remarkable that a big name like Lisa Jacobs wants to make time for two concerts with a non-professional orchestra. The Violin Concerto by Jean Sibelius is extremely difficult, especially the last movement. But Jacobs plays masterfully, without virtuosic display she lays bare the northern soul of Sibelius.
She begins the icy melody of the first movement with a small vibrato, as almost every soloist does in this piece. One violinist once did it differently, I will never forget that. Shrill and without vibrato, listen to the recording by Anne-Sophie Mutter with Staatskapelle Dresden from 1995 on Deutsche Grammophon. The best interpretation of the Sibelius concerto I have ever heard. After that, Jacobs plays an encore, the Adagio from the first sonata for unaccompanied violin by Bach. It is as if she presents her calling card with this. Not easy to play this slow and multi-voiced piece so composedly and serenely as an encore.
Second Clarinet
You should not judge Symfonieorkest Continuo with the ears of a professional critic. It sometimes sounds a bit messy, entries and intonation are not always pure. The slow movement of Sibelius' Violin Concerto begins with a melody from the two clarinets. Here the second overpowered the first. That's something different, I thought.
In fact, this is largely about enthusiasts in the truest sense of the word. In the five concerts I have attended since 2022, you feel the enthusiasm, the drive, and certainly also the professional leadership of conductor Kevin Hendrickx every time. I wonder why Kevin Hendrickx did not become a full-time conductor. Would he be even better as a chemist than as a conductor?
Authoritarian and Repressive
The Fifth Symphony by Dmitri Shostakovich is the sonification of the authoritarian Soviet regime. You hear in it the bleak reality of the thirties, the repressive system and permanent fear. At the same time, you hear from time to time the hope that often rings out at the end in a major chord. During the premiere on November 21, 1937, the audience understood the underlying message in the music. In the summer of 1937, the Great Terror had begun in the Soviet Union. Stalin's Great Purge led to the execution of hundreds of thousands of civilians.
Today, too, Continuo has the audience in its grip, everyone was moved. Let this symphony by Shostakovich sound as a tribute, was the mission of opus 47. A tribute to all those who today still live under the violence of repression and terror.
Opus 47 was quite an experience and makes the listener also aware of the horrors of certain regimes. Even today there is state terror, as in Iran. Hopefully there is also a spark of hope among the protesters in Tehran like in the symphony. Hope for a regime change, after – indeed – 47 years.
