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.

The program will open Joey Roukens’ Distorted Fantasia

A piece ispired by Jan Pieterszoon Sweelinck. 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.
The first calm measures, with descending minor thirds (f-d, g-e) as a starting point, lead to more turbulent episodes as faster passages and ornamentations gain the upper hand – a principle that is also common to Sweelinck. The music acquires a motoric momentum that typifies much of Roukens’ work. A hectic episode ends in a sea of swelling and fading tonal repetitions. The finale evokes a whole new, almost mystical sound world.

Golden sound

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.”

Impossible love

Romeo and Juliet is perhaps the ultimate love story. The classic story 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.

Program:

Roukens Distorted Fantasia

Mahler Songs from ‘Des Knaben Wunderhorn’

Prokofiev Romeo and Juliet: Suite