KlaraFestival: September adventures

It’s back to school, back to work and back to a packed diary of cultural events. Just as suddenly as the concert halls and theatres of Brussels go very quiet in August (as most of the city disappears on holiday), come September there’s more to choose from than you could possibly have time for.

For classical music fans in Brussels, the first two weeks of September are dominated by the KlaraFestival, which takes its name from the classical music radio station Klara. This year the festival’s theme is ‘Imagine Paradise’ and, in the organisers’ words, moves “between hope and the imagination, between utopia and reality, between the beautiful and the horrific.”

As part of the festival, earlier this week I heard a mesmerising recital by cellist Steven Isserlis, with Denes Varjon on piano. Entitled Russian Utopia, the programme included Shostakovich’s Sonata for cello and piano in D minor and Scriabin’s Sonata for solo piano No. 5. The performances were exciting and energetic, be it Varjon playing the Scriabin with such panache that he literally jumped from the keyboard as he played the last chord or Isserlis emphasising the cheeky, almost sarcastic, moments of the Shostakovich with a wry smile of his own towards the audience. The engagement with the audience was maintained to the end, with final bows not only being taken by both players, but Isserlis also amusingly allowing his cello to take its own little bow.

This coming Sunday, the Brussels Philharmonic and the Flemish Radio Choir conducted by Sir Neville Mariner will be performing Britten’s War Requiem. The work, composed in 1962 to commemorate the bombing of Coventry by the German Luftwaffe 20 years earlier, has a score and text that “transcend historical circumstance and offer one of the most universal and poignant anti-war manifestos in the history of music,” according to the programme. Needless to say, this Sunday is the 10th anniversary of the September 11 attacks in the U.S.

Between now and the end of the festival on September 16, there’s at least one concert every day. Highlights range from the Akademie fuer alte Musik Berlin to Roger Norrington conducting the Mahler Chamber Orchestra. If you want something a little bit different though, then take a look at the final night’s line-up when a Brussels nightclub (Club Mirano) will open its doors to music from Bach to Glass played by DJs. The festival said it wanted to take "an adventurous approach" to classical music; no one could accuse it of failing to achieve that.