Night of the Violin effectively proves that the violin is much more than a classical instrument

You couldn’t really speak of a night, Friday, during the first ‘Festival Night of the Violin’ in TivoliVredenburg in Utrecht. Not like the Night of Poetry and the Museum Night, which continue until late at night. The Night of the violin obediently lasts until a quarter past 12.

It is a real festival, with about 650 visitors who scurry about the upper floors of TivoliVredenburg full of choice stress due to the overlapping block schedule full of violinists in all musical styles. In the Hertz Hall, renowned violin mastodons play in their genre: the Irish fiddler Frankie Gavin and the Hungarian gypsy violinist Roby Lakatos, both past their peak, but no less special to hear. Both have to get used to the good Dutch listening public. One brave man shouts ‘JIP!’, one girl dances tapping out of the hall, but the rest of the well-filled hall listens breathlessly to the lightning-fast notes meant to party and dance. As if you were listening to carnival music, rubbing your chin in appreciation. Fortunately, it erupts after every last note.

The smaller rooms at the top of TivoliVredenburg are also filled with chairs, but here the audience loosens up. Violinist Moniek de Leeuw plays infectious American fiddle music, and passes a basket of shakers around for those who want to make music. Anan Al-Kadamani enchants with extremely delicately played Arabian and Middle Eastern improvisations, and Shauntell Baumgard is in her element in unadulterated jazz versus Surinamese-Urban tango. All three have terribly good band members.

Those who walk quickly will also hear Indian violin music by Lenneke van Staalen, Andalusian violin music by Abderrahim Semlali and classical, jazz, hip-hop and soul by Yannick Hiwat in the adjoining room. Isabelle van Keulen and Merel Vercammen provide a classic share. There are a striking number of parents with teenagers and twenty-somethings in the audience.

In ‘The Pit’ there is a ‘Paganini battle’ twice, where, copied from the hip-hop scene, Paganini’s music is used to battle between two prize winners of the National Violin Competition. Shines, because it’s so popular that ‘The Pit’ has to be closed.

Democratization of the violin

Festivals like this have been popping up like mushrooms in recent years. Not all of them add anything essential, except at a local level and simply because: the more festivals, the more fun. The Night of the Violin, on the other hand, has a clear goal: the democratization of the violin as an instrument of many more musical styles than just classical music. That works. You don’t often see a festival that hits the bull’s eye: it is accessible, the atmosphere is relaxed, the audience is young and old and the musical offer is high quality and diverse. The violin is not just a classical instrument, all that talent proves, and it never has been, the fiddle and folk music mastodons show.

Organizer Aart-Jan van de Pol makes a clever maneuver with it: as director of the National Violin Competition, best known for the prestigious Oscar Back Prize, he has been aiming for some time to diversify the traditionally focused violin competition on classical music. Last year, the competition launched the ‘Jonge Makers Prijs’ for other music genres (prize money: €1,500, versus €12,000 for the Oscar Back), but the Night of the Viool contains bigger plans. “Nothing should change about the Oscar Back Prize,” says Van de Pol when asked. “In order to remain relevant, the violin competition must be broader.” With the Night of the Violin, he effectively checkmates skeptics in advance.

Musical communication

At the closing concert, Curator and jazz and folk violinist Tim Kliphuis improvises with the violin night artists. This becomes moving with the fragile Frankie Gavin, and with the perky Roby Lakatos a feast of heart-warming fun, stunningly detailed playing and inimitable musical communication. At the end, Kliphuis takes all eighteen musicians on stage for a joint ‘we’ll see how it goes’. Kliphuis takes turns assigning everyone a solo to seal the festival success: so many violins, played with mastery, and no two sound the same.

Read also: ‘Oskar Back Award for violinist Isobel Warmelink‘

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