This is not a numbers game, even though you could still add the number 25 to it. The festival that once began as "Festival van Vlaanderen - Afdeling Vlaams-Brabant" has now existed for 25 years. But that Leuven festival has meanwhile undergone a complete transformation. The festival team wanted to give more attention to twentieth-century music in the Leuven concerts and thus got the name Novecento and also for contemporary music from the 21st century and that got the name Transit. When that new 21st century came of age in 2018, it was time for a new name again. And for that new name, a simple solution was at hand. It simply became "Festival 20·21"
Last year there was a lot of attention for 50 years of "Men on the Moon". But this year we could also see a photo of a "black hole" for the first time. So Festival 20·21 also wanted to see it widely this year and chose for a planetary dimension, for the attraction of the unknown. And the opening concert starts planetarily. Gustav Holst's The Planets is admittedly not really unknown but the Trombone Unit Hannover brings a performance of it that has never been heard before. "That will be something very exceptional" says artistic director and professor of musicology at KU Leuven, Pieter Bergé: "We really asked those people to write that for us. As an opening concert for our anniversary, they will perform that well-known symphonic work in a version for eight trombones and percussion. That will certainly provide spectacle."
Pieter Bergé also gives a lecture-recital where he introduces two boundary-pushing quartets with the Quator Danel, the second by Schönberg and the Grosse Fuge by Beethoven.
Also featured are the music ensemble Oxalys with British chamber music including Britten's Six Metamorphoses, the Goeyvaerts String Trio comes with work by Wolfgang Rihm that goes through "the marrow and bone", as stated in the brochure, his Musik für drei Streicher. That is precisely what this festival is about: opening your ears to new and strange discoveries. Because so often the listener's lament after such a concert is: I don't understand any of this. Pieter Bergé wrote the festival essay about it: What is there actually to understand? "You often hear it said that a piece like Schönberg's is difficult to understand, but you can actually understand it if you know what's happening. Understanding can bring you closer to the music and that's what I try to explore. There are many facets to it, but it's mainly about finding the right listening attitude," says Bergé.
Daring combination: Bach and Berio
And then there's also – as is customary – a very special festival Sunday. This time with a daring combination: Bach and Roel Dieltiens with a number of cello suites and top soloists performing Luciano Berio's sequenzas. Anyone who might be afraid to undergo that daring combination can set their fears at ease by first listening to the accompanying lectures by Ignace Bossuyt on his Bach and by Mark Delaere on Berio. With a day ticket you get three concerts, two intros and lunch: high-quality entertainment from 9 a.m. to 9:30 p.m.
Again also the Pavel Haas Quartet, with Janacek (Intimate Letters), Dvorak (his American String Quartet) and Ervin Schulhoff, a composer on the margins of modernism. If you want to hear music from another master of sound from very recent music history, come listen to the Collectief which performs work by French spectralist Tristan Murail. According to the festival management: real connoisseur's music. With the wordplay "finishing touch," the festival concludes with another contemporary master, the Finnish Kaija Saariaho with her Aile du songe, and the Antwerp Symphony Orchestra brings the fifth symphony by that other Finn, Jean Sibelius.
Transit: more than just a little more
Between all these concerts, you can hear other sounds on the extended weekend from Friday 18 to Sunday 20 October during the Transit part of the festival. That has specialized for years in "the sound of tomorrow" under the expert guidance of musicologist Maarten Beirens, lecturer at the University of Amsterdam. Late-night concerts, free concerts, premieres and creations, sofa conversations, all in the halls and café of the Leuven Arts Centre STUK. If I randomly mention a few names here, you'll immediately see what you'll get to hear: Wim Hendrickx, Daan Janssens, Gerrit Valckenaers, Erich Sleichim, Annelies Van Parijs, all names of people who are making it today and tomorrow. Plus plenty of foreign guests and all of it with traditional ensembles, modernistic, visual things, graphic, extreme, film, video, multimedia, electronic….the whole range.
Maarten Beirens, general artistic and business director of Festival 20·21: "One of the reasons why we also phased out the name Novecento and started with Festival 20·21 is that in addition to the Novecento repertoire, we also wanted to bring new things that could become the repertoire of the 21st century or maybe not. And then you also get that interesting overlap of works from the 20th with the 21st century. A mix and great diversity of tomorrow's classics, young music and new music. We are committed to experimentation, not so much to experimental music – that term can be very misleading – but rather to what does not yet belong to the canon and is self-evident, but with what is happening now, what is coming at us musically, in 2019 and beyond! That's what Transit wants to be, with that very clear and sharply defined profile."
- WHAT: Festival 20-21 , Music Classics of Tomorrow (23/9 to 25/10/2019) - Transit. The sound of tomorrow (18-20/10/2019)
- WHERE: various locations in Leuven (Aula Pieter De Somer, Grote Aula, Stadsschouwburg, Iers College, LUCA Campus Lemmens, STUK)
- WHO: programme