Even recovering from an injury, Janine Jansen possesses that beautiful sound richness

With an oliebol in hand, you shuffle through the water-cold, Christmas-lit streets of Utrecht. On the way to yet another church where, as if it were nothing, a few world-class musicians just play excellent chamber music. In a packed Geertekerk, under real candlelight, the queen sits richly, surrounded by musical friends, violinist Janine Jansen, founder and artistic director of the International Chamber Music Festival Utrecht.

Whether she could play at her own festival remained uncertain until the end. An unfortunate slip left her with a wrist injury last month. She had to cancel several recitals at home and abroad, including New York’s Carnegie Hall.

But there is good news in Utrecht: she is playing! Not all planned parts, to avoid overload. A number of parts have been shifted and in some concerts Jansen is (partially) replaced.

Replacing sounds almost disrespectful, as if you are getting second-rate musicians in return. That is not the case here: Janine Jansen has been inviting good friends to her chamber music festival since 2003. All great musicians with an international career. Who is playing is often more important than what exactly is being played. Jansen has never had a common thread in music programming in all those years, she said last year NRC.

Perfect harmony

If there is perhaps a cautious light red thread running through the program fabric this year, it is the music of Johannes Brahms. He is well represented with four important pieces. With it First piano trio Jansen will kick off the opening concert on Friday evening, next to Pablo Ferrández on cello and with Denis Kozhukhin behind the grand piano. What is striking is the perfect harmony between the three – how sweetly they take melodies from each other and pass them on again. No one claims the spotlight at the expense of the others, Kozhukhin’s sensitive piano playing functions as cement between the two strings. In the very slowly played Adagio they briefly give the sold-out Main Hall of TivoliVredenburg the intimacy of a living room. No one dares to disturb the soft music with coughing.

After the break, Jansen sits in the audience as a listener; violinist Stephen Waarts stands in for her. You can only imagine how Jansen’s hands must be itching to be able to play in it himself Piano quintet by Sergei Taneyev – a challenging and fascinating work.

The relatively unknown Taneyev (1856-1915) was taught by Tchaikovsky and was himself a teacher of Scriabin and Rachmaninoff, among others. But describing his music as a bridge between those styles is not enough: Taneyev had a very unique voice. You can definitely call it stormy, but more like a storm raging in your own head than one that hits bleakly around the house. Ruminative chatter around one note or chord, sudden pauses in thought, sometimes a patch of mist as a sweet inspiration. A dramatic unison in the third movement transitions seamlessly into a wonderfully peaceful, almost Pachelbel-like passacaglia. The lavish ‘Finale’ gets the audience into a frenzy.

Apple pie concerts

In addition to the ‘big names’, the IKFU also hosts apple pie concerts in community centers and residential care centers, and recitals with young talent. The financially troubled ensemble Camerata Trajectina will also perform. Under the title ‘The sound of the city’ they will perform music from Utrecht on Saturday afternoon by Jacob van Eyck, ‘the most famous Utrecht composer in the world’.

In the seventeenth century, Van Eyck took his recorder to the Utrecht Janskerkhof, then more of a park than a square, to happily vary popular tunes. Soprano Klaartje van Veldhoven and tenor Max Bruins sing songs from that time: about a horny Apollo who chases Daphne, or a verse about ‘moy Aeltjen’, who, after a night with Floris in the stable, develops a tumor that will last forever. ‘. A sympathetic concert, which nevertheless remains a bit stiff because the performance is difficult to separate from the sheet music.

The consistently sold-out Church Marathon, rewarded with oliebollen and mulled wine, offers beautiful concerts at three attractive locations. In the Nicolaï Church, the National Women’s Youth Choir enchants when they sing the Christmas hymn, distributed throughout the audience. In dulci jubilo let it echo. The Leeuwenbergh Gasthuis is lifted by a strong rendition of Brahms’ First piano quartet – with top pianist Alexandre Kantorow, among others.

Apocalyptic disorder

Final destination of the marathon is the Geertekerk. That’s where it sounds Quatuor pour la fin du temps – a quartet for the end of time. Olivier Messiaen wrote the work as a prisoner of war in a German camp, for himself and three other imprisoned musicians. That explains the unusual line-up: piano, violin, cello and clarinet. Music that balances between apocalyptic disorder and pious meditation.

The long clarinet solo, Abîme des oiseauxdepicts a lonely bird in a desolate landscape, its colorful plumage covered by an ashen layer of particulate matter. It seems as if clarinetist Martin Fröst conjures up his chirping clarinet screams from another dimension. They always start so incredibly soft that you feel the vibrations before you hear them.

In the Vocalise Janine Jansen and Pablo Ferrández skate over the thin ice of Denis Kozhukhin’s fleeting piano chords. With the dancing flames of real candlelight in the chandeliers above you, it is difficult to imagine a more impressive performance. By the way, nothing can be heard of Jansen’s injury: her tone has that characteristic, undiminished beautiful sound richness, especially in her long final solo. Here too, an audience that listens to it breathlessly.

The miracle of Messiaen is how you can compose such music while staring death in the face. He sensed that a few months after the premiere of his Quatuor would be released from the camp and live another fifty years? Feelings of total absurdity and hopelessness are accompanied by an almost banal down-to-earthness in this music. Or, in the words of a festival volunteer at the IKFU: music for the end of time, and tomorrow is another day.

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