The medieval city of Bruges has a distinctive orange-terracotta hue to its rooftops and brickwork, which pile up in great heaps when seen from above. It is a colouration mirrored by the Concertgebouw Bruges, the city’s multifaceted concert hall, opened in 2002 and covered from top to bottom in terracotta tiles.
Except, in a year or two, they’ll all need to be replaced. Jeroen Vanacker, Artistic Director of the Concertgebouw explains: “There are 68,000 terracotta tiles, and at the moment we’re looking for options as to how to replace them with Building Integrated Photovoltaic cells. This way we could be able to generate a lot of electricity, maybe even more electricity than we need ourselves.” Running a large arts space is extremely energy-intensive, and it’s something the Concertgebouw team are seriously thinking about.
“At every conference and professional meeting in classical music, and other sectors too, there are discussions about ecological durability and sustainability. The next IAMA conference takes place in Bruges, and there we’ll host 400 delegates in these discussions,” Vanacker says.
It’s not just the impact made by the building that concerns Vanacker and the Concertgebouw team: almost all of the venue’s visiting orchestras do not travel by air either, or stay longer for residencies. Their long-standing relationship with the Budapest Festival Orchestra began in 2013, and has been supplemented by other partner ensembles. “It’s a new project called Close Connections. The three partners are the Rotterdam Philharmonic, the Gürzenich-Orchester Köln, and the London Philharmonic Orchestra. These orchestras are all quite different, with different profiles. But they all come to Bruges by train or bus. This project is a deliberate choice for durability, and not only in ecological terms, we also go deeper in terms of collaboration.”
The orchestras themselves are often presenting adventurous programmes too. “For instance, the London Philharmonic is having a residency in March. We will co-produce a new visual project by Wayne McGregor, projected on a cube above the orchestra, which is combined with music of Szymanowski. We have also co-commissioned a new work from Tania León,” Vanacker says. “When we work closely together with orchestras in this way, it makes sense to co-commission new projects. Next season we will co-commission a new project with the Rotterdam Philharmonic, and we’re also looking into creating concert operas together with the Gürzenich-Orchester.”
The Concertgebouw has two concert spaces. The main hall holds 1,290 seats and is used for everything from choral, orchestral and jazz performance to contemporary dance, and even solo recitals. In addition, a chamber hall, with 320 seats, is also available – and helpful given the importance of Baroque music in Bruges.
The Concertgebouw’s range and adaptability as a venue seem to have rubbed off on the visiting ensembles. For instance, in April, the Brussels Philharmonic present CLUB Surround, where audience members are placed within a forest of orchestral musicians. “Two hundred people can sit inside the orchestra, ten times over five days, in repertoire that we have hand-picked together with the Brussels Philharmonic,” Vanacker says. “It offers the best first-time experience with classical music that I can imagine.”
Brussels Philharmonic have also programmed adventurously at the venue this season: this past month, Ilan Volkov led several improvisatory works by Anthony Braxton as well as a raucous new work for turntablist Mariam Rezaei with the orchestra. An adventurous programme of dance is also on at the Concertgebouw this December, including the Belgian premiere of Michiel Vandevelde’s Sacre du Printemps, and Richard Siegal’s New Ballet méchanique, with sound design by Swiss sound artist Zimoun. “The dance festival has been going since 2006, and the focus is very much on new creations, and a great diversity in the artists involved. It’s spread over the whole city, so we make use of many other venues as well,” Vanacker says.
In general, programming at the Concertgebouw is done thematically, through strands and festivals. “We’ve been working in this way for sixteen years. Although we’ve evolved a lot over that time, the core is storytelling. Unlike other venues, we work with seasonal dramaturgy and seasonal themes, told through many different projects throughout the season, as well as festivals, which can be one-off or recurring,” Vanacker says.
“Telling stories is very important for us. In fact we’ve already chosen the themes for five years, following the cycle of life. With this year’s season, we focus on birth and motherhood; then the next season with coming of age. Then, the middle of life, which will be connected to love and relationships; then the wisdom of life and death and the afterlife in the last season.” The Concertgebouw’s “Season’s Thinker” for this year is cultural psychologist Joanna Wojtkowiak, who gave a keynote to launch the whole season in September.
One example of this thematic approach is the April series focusing explicitly on the topic of motherhood. Appearing in this series are, among others, the Flemish Radio Choir and Il Gardellino performing music on the theme of the pietà, and kora player Mamadou Dramé and lutenist Jan Van Outryve performing Zeebrugge children’s songs. “We’ve collected different children’s songs from different traditions, and arranged them and made music theatre out of them. As well as in the Concertgebouw, we will also present them in small performance venues throughout the city. And after recording them, we will give this collection of songs to every newborn child in all the city hospitals,” Vanacker tells me.
“We choose these themes because they’re universal and make it easier to create connections between the Western classical music tradition and other musical traditions.” Vanacker speaks about the upcoming Winter Solstice festival at the end of 2023: “We will have Bach’s Weihnachtsoratorium next to the Persian festival of Yaldā”, an ancient festival celebrating birth, aligning with the longest night of the year. Persian classical repertoire is presented alongside poetry of Hafez and Rumi.
Early music from Scandinavia is also performed at the Winter Solstice festival, and it forms part of a wider programme of Baroque and Renaissance music regularly performed at the Concertgebouw. Bruges was an important centre for music-making in the Renaissance, and in the 20th century, Baroque and Renaissance music saw significant revival. The MA Festival (or Musica Antiqua Bruges), beginning in the early 1960s, played a significant role in the early music revival and is still hosted at the Concertgebouw.
“Flanders – Bruges and Antwerp – was a big cultural centre in the 15th and 16th centuries. We sometimes like to say Bruges was like the New York City of the 15th century. Flemish artists were sent to many major courts across the continent. Hence the focus on important Flemish composers of this period: Adrian Willaert, Jakob Obrecht, Guillaume Dufay, are just a few examples.” The GOLD festival in May 2024, featuring the Huelgas Ensemble and Alamire vocal ensemble, focuses explicitly on these Renaissance Flemish composers.
Philippe Herreweghe, one of the foremost conductors of Bach, also frequently appears at the Concertgebouw, leading the Collegium Vocale Ghent. The Bach Academy in January comprises masterclasses and open rehearsals as well as performances led by Herreweghe, and like other festivals at the Concertgebouw, lectures and courses also form part of the series.
Contemporary music is also an important part of the Concertgebouw season. The two Deep Listening Days, in September and March, follow thinking from Pauline Oliveros, whose practice of concerted attentiveness and openness suits the immersive nature of these day-long festivals. The March day features virtuoso trumpeter Marco Blaauw, and other contemporary music groups appearing in this year’s season include the Ictus Ensemble, the Nadar Ensemble, and the Hermes Ensemble.
“We try to use as much storytelling as possible in presenting contemporary music,” Vanacker says. “The focus on Deep Listening this season has to do with just how overwhelmingly visual our society is, and how important it is to evolve and deepen our sense of listening. It applies not only to the Deep Listening Days but to the whole programme, for our ears to be open to new experiences.”
These varied activities at the Concertgebouw give some indications as to where European concert halls are heading. The venue is particularly concerned with outreach: the Iedereen Klassiek (“Everyone Classic”) day, the last Saturday in October, presents free concerts for “15,000 people all over the city”, Vanacker tells me, and the venue also works closely with the city’s music schools and amateur musicians. Taken together with an interventionist, thematic approach to programming across a varied range of disciplines, and a sincere commitment to decarbonisation – for the building and for visiting musicians – if you want to know what the future of European classical music is likely to look like, the Concertgebouw Bruges is as close as any.
See listings for upcoming events at Concertgebouw Bruges.
This article was sponsored by Concertgebouw Bruges.
