Listen up everyone! Klaas de Vries has been writing a major new orchestral work. Yes, you heard it right: NEW ORCHESTRAL WORK BY KLAAS DE VRIES! This joyous event has inspired Festival Dag in de Branding to put the composer, who turned 80 last summer, at the centre of an especially festive edition of the festival, with the man himself as guest curator. In addition to De Vries’ brand-new Cada instante the programme includes György Kurtág’s impressive Stele and Beethoven’s Fourth Piano Concerto, with master pianist Hannes Minnaar as soloist.

The orchestral part is in the hands of the Residentie Orkest and students of the Royal Conservatoire, led by conductor Chloe Rooke. The performance of De Vries’ new composition requires a large number of musicians, which provides an excellent opportunity to also put Kurtág’s Stele on the lecterns. At thirteen minutes, the piece may be a relatively long one in Kurtág’s oeuvre of mostly miniatures, but the combination of limited duration and huge instrumentation means Stele is rarely played live. Leave it to Kurtág, though, to fill its short timespan with an extraordinary amount of meaning.

In between the works of these two contemporary masters, we hear one of the most beloved piano concertos of all time, Beethoven’s Fourth. It was premiered in the famous concert in Theater an der Wien on 22 December 1808, along with Beethoven’s Fifth and Sixth symphonies and several more pieces. Four hours of new music in a chilly hall – even in Beethoven’s time this caused quite a stir. Tonight’s concert is considerably shorter in duration, but no less in musical weight. Especially for the occasion, Klaas de Vries wrote a cadenza for Beethoven’s piano concerto, to be premiered by Hannes Minnaar.