AVROTROS opens the season with a grand line-up: choir, orchestra, soloists and with chief conductor Karina Canellakis. This concert reflects the strengths of the AVROTROS Friday Concert: an eye for the rich musical tradition, a finely-tuned antenna for forgotten works and geniuses, and contributing to the expansion and renewal of the repertoire.

What better way to start an opening concert than with contemporary music? The new work is by Jacob ter Veldhuis (Jacob TV), the composer originally from Groningen who always wants to create beauty and thus reaches a large international audience. With the cantata Faust et Hélène, Lili Boulanger, who died young, won the Prix de Rome in 1913, the most important French composition prize. Le Monde Musical wrote at the time: ‘Her work stands out far above the others. It grips everyone, even on first acquaintance’. Boulanger took Faust’s wish to bring his beloved Hélène to life as an opportunity to write a work with sumptuous, richly orchestrated sounds.