Supernova: duo altiler

Welcome to the 20th Klarafestival!

Under the title We Are Now, this special anniversary edition pays tribute to the here and now. No one embraces the magic of the moment more fearlessly than festival artist Patricia Kopatchinskaja. Wherever and whatever she plays, this Moldovan violinist and composer sets the stage alight. For her, every concert is a new beginning, a full moment in which anything can happen. Klarafestival 2025 paints a multifaceted portrait of Patricia Kopatchinskaja as a violinist, composer and inspiring presence.

In honour of our 20th anniversary, we are launching a new tradition: for one day, Mont des Arts will be transformed into the Muziekberg /Mont des Musiques. Alongside concerts and performances at various venues, a new ensemble will also see the light. Sound of Brussels Orchestra goes in search of the exceptional sound of our capital.

We live in challenging times, and some of the festival projects reflect on this. At the same time, they demonstrate how much hope can lurk between the notes of a Stabat Mater or a Dies Irae. How music can move and inspire us. For Patricia Kopatchinskaja, music is no abstract matter: ‘Music is there for us to do something with it. Even when it has no concrete message or function, it appeals to us. It wants to be heard. I don't believe in absolute music. Not really.'

Let the celebration begin!

Joost Fonteyne, intendant
Jan Raes, chairman
Chantal Pattyn, network manager

‘Music and poetry are the only art forms that progress in time.’ The French composer Claude Debussy was attempting to capture what makes music so special. He was unique in understanding that music occupies no place in space, as a painting does, but a moment in time. With their programme for the Supernova laureates concert, the Duo Altiler cherish a similar ambition. Violinist  Veronique De Raedemaeker and pianist Alexander Declercq explain: ‘We hope that the audience briefly loses itself; that the concert seems to last only a brief moment, and yet contains an entire world.’

That world is surprisingly colourful and light, despite taking shape within a 20th century Europe at war. ‘In situations that arouse great emotions, composers often go a step further in their expression,’ the ensemble finds. ‘They surrender to the music.’ Where, until then, music largely attempted to capture universal emotions, removing one from the world for a short while, composers such as Lili Boulanger and Claude Debussy set out from our individual world of emotions, in order to connect with the world at large.

Boulanger does not wish to tell a story with her Nocturne, but to evoke a mood. Like night falling, the violin’s melody unfolds – at first gradually and then, before you know it, totally. The music is always in motion and the harmonies remain unresolved, whereby the ending sounds more like a question than an answer. That suggestive character made an impression on Debussy, who described her work as ‘undulating and graceful’. In his Sonata in G minor, he employs rough brushstrokes to paint a musical landscape that is strikingly optimistic, despite Debussy’s own approaching demise and the First World War, which was then well underway.

War also marked Olivier Messiaen’s life. His Quartet for the End of Time, written in the German prisoner of war camp where he was interned, was an attempt to recreate in sound ‘the harmonious stillness of the heavens’. Unlike his orchestral works – always large-scale, rhythmic and at times eclectic – this quartet is intimate and restrained. ‘You enter a trance-like state, in which you only await the following note’, explain De Raedemaeker en Declercq, who are playing the eighth and final movement: ‘Louange à l’éternité de Jésus’. They add: ‘You are not anticipating a climax or conclusion. You live from one chord to the next and forget your surroundings.’

That feeling of containing time is the driving force behind Duo Altiler’s Supernova programme. The musicians explain: ‘We don’t set out with a time period theme, but with an image, a narrative arc or an emotional progression. That can well lead to some rather odd choices of programme, which on paper appear weird, but result in a clear musical line, where each piece has its place within the whole and as a result transcends itself. In this programme, the colours are always more intense, the textures always richer.’

Which is why the duo end their recital with the ‘Adagio’ from Leǒs Janáček’s Volin sonata and the ‘Allegro’ from the Violin sonata by Béla Bartók. Both composers were inspired by East-European folklore and resisted the dominance of the Western romantic tradition. In their sonatas, one finds no symbol-filled emotional melodies, but rhythmic passages, dissonant tones and folkdance. ‘20th-century music is not abstract, but filled with colour and energy’, declare De Raedemaeker and Declercq.

Hanne Schelstraete

With Duo Altiler, named after the tradition of gathering around a lime tree, violinist Veronique De Raedemaeker and pianist Alexander Declercq aim to create musical encounters. In addition to classical masterpieces by the likes of Béla Bartók, Ludwig van Beethoven and Maurice Ravel, they also play rarely performed works. In this way, they seek to transcend musical conventions and celebrate music as an experiment with an uncertain outcome. This quest led to a selection for Klara’s De Twintigers in 2023, with concerts at the Concertgebouw Brugge for Iedereen Klassiek and at the VRT Toots Studios as the culmination and highlight of this showcase.