The traditional Valentine’s Day concert gives love a boost every year. Going to a concert together already creates a bond, and the music takes it even further. Listen to songs from Mahler’s Des Knaben Wunderhorn or a suite from Prokofiev’s Romeo and Juliet. Mezzo-soprano Maria Warenberg and the Radio Philharmonic Orchestra know how to touch everyone’s heart. In 2023, Maria Warenberg was one of the laureates of the arduous Queen Elizabeth II Competition. The Dutch mezzo-soprano now sings as a soloist with the Opéra National de Paris and her international star is rapidly rising. “A powerful, lyrical, and golden sound,” wrote Het Parool about this “opera star in the making.” Romeo and Juliet is perhaps the ultimate love story. The classic about impossible love made famous by Shakespeare is also a source of inspiration for many composers. Prokofiev adapted it into a full-length ballet. The equally romantic and tragic story, leading up to the inevitable death of love, can also be followed in the various suites he composed afterwards.

Joey Roukens is often inspired by great examples from the distant past. For the Concertgebouw Orchestra and the Sweelinck 2021 Foundation, he threw himself into Jan Pieterszoon Sweelinck with great pleasure. Roukens: ‘I have a great affinity with his music, particularly the keyboard works, which I regularly play myself on the piano.’ One of the Fantasias in Dorian mode (SWwV 259) forms the basis of the new commissioned work. Sweelinck is always present, but ‘filtered through 21st-century glasses’, as ‘in a (contemporary) dream that distorts the music in a surreal way.’ The work draws Sweelinck’s idiom into our time with alienating harmonies, distorted rhythms and dramatic contrasts.

Program:

Roukens – Distorted Fantasia (after J.P. Sweelinck)

Mahler – Liederen from ‘Des Knaben Wunderhorn’ (Maria Warenberg mezzo-soprano)

Prokofiev – Romeo and Julia: Suite