Classical music in Nieuwe Kerk: Building bridges

april 2025, article 

Building bridges – between centuries, genres and cultures – is a theme that runs throughout the programming at Nieuwe Kerk. Read on to discover what Nieuwe Kerk holds in store in May and June of 2025.

Bridging the centuries: that’s the title of a concert by the young, dynamic Rosin Octet. The title emerged from a wonderful concept: that compositions from different eras brought together in a single programme can feed a rich historical dialogue.

Consider for instance the concert by violinist Joe Puglia, who commissioned a series of new compositions to celebrate the sound of his 200-year-old violin. Or take Songs of Love & Death, in which Ensemble Klang and Arturo Den Hartog explore the theme of love and death in Purcell but also in contemporary composers such as David Lang. The young contrabass virtuoso James Oesi teams up with theorbist Mike Fentross to effortlessly weave together baroque music with South African jazz from the 1990s. While Rembrandt Frerichs, who originally started out in jazz, transplants the technique of improvisation to the classical world.

You can build bridges between centuries and genres, but of course between cultures as well. In Cello Octet Amsterdam’s Sensing Earth, composers from around the world unite around the single shared theme of ecology. And for the Day of the Composer, Geerten van de Wetering and the Amstel Kwartet have chosen to concentrate on the Ukrainian composer Maxim Shalygin and the Iranian composer Aftab Darvishi.

Narratives are another beautiful way of building bridges. The New European Ensemble invites the Scottish author Ali Smith and performs works by contemporary female composers that were inspired by her novels. And on 4 May, Cappella Amsterdam joins author Jan Brokken to commemorate the National Remembrance of the Dead, drawing inspiration from his book ‘De Rechtvaardigen’.

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