Early Music Agenda: concerts in the Netherlands and Flanders

Lark's Echoes

Sat, 25 Jul 2026 18:00:00 GMT

Tickets: €20

Église Saint-Étienne (Waha)

On the occasion of the 400th anniversary of the death of John Dowland in 2026, tenor Maxime Melnik and lutenist Adriaan Lauwers offer a sensitive, intimate and deeply embodied tribute to the English composer, a major figure in Renaissance music. An undisputed master of lute song, Dowland was able to bring to a rare degree of refinement the expression of human passions, combining melancholy, introspection and great poetic delicacy. This program brings together a selection of his most famous songs for voice and lute, where text and music dialogue with extreme subtlety, revealing all the expressive richness of his language. These vocal pages are punctuated by Lachrimae and other iconic instrumental pieces, offering moments of breathing and contemplation. Through this alternation, Maxime Melnik and Adriaan Lauwers invite the public to immerse themselves in Dowland's universe, where the apparent simplicity of writing hides an intensity of rare depth.

Lark's Echoes

Sat, 12 Sep 2026 18:00:00 GMT

Tickets: €12 – €30

Eglise Saint-Servais

On the occasion of the 400th anniversary of the death of John Dowland in 2026, tenor Maxime Melnik and lutenist Adriaan Lauwers extend their musical complicity born at Les Nuits de Septembre 2022 by paying a sensitive and embodied tribute to the master of lute song.

Ensemble Danguy

Sun, 27 Sep 2026 14:00:00 GMT

Tickets: €12 – €30

Église Saint-Denis

Les Quatre Saisons ont connu mille métamorphoses dont celles de Nicolas Chédeville en 1739. Avec Tobie Miller à la vielle à roue, cette version historique fait revivre un XVIIIᵉ siècle pastoral et inventif où se côtoient travestissement musical et jeu d’identité.

Dialogos

Fri, 02 Oct 2026 18:00:00 GMT

Tickets: €12 – €30

Église Saint-Denis

In 964, the Canons of Winchester were expelled from the choir, accused of drunkenness and scandal. A thousand years later, around the Troparia in Winchester, four musicians revive this founding tumult, echoing the clash between insiders and outsiders, past and present.

Mozart / Beethoven

Sat, 03 Oct 2026 14:00:00 GMT

Tickets: €12 – €48

Liège

For his debut with the OPRL, the renowned Dutch conductor Ton Koopman moves between the final brilliance of Viennese Classicism and the promises of a new world. With his “Jupiter” Symphony (1788), Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart brings architectural clarity, intricate melodic interplay, and the Enlightenment ideal of harmony to its ultimate point of balance. Ludwig van Beethoven’s Symphony No. 2 (1803), while still rooted in this tradition, shifts its foundations: rhythmic complexity, heightened dynamic contrasts, and the primacy of expressive drive foreshadow a modernity based on energy, tension, and the assertion of subjectivity. Romanticism is on the way…

Peaceful forest

Sun, 04 Oct 2026 07:30:00 GMT

Tickets: €5 – €26

Colomban

- Walloon Brabant - Colomban

Forêt Paisible (2,5ans-5ans)

Sun, 04 Oct 2026 09:00:00 GMT

Tickets: €5 – €26

Colomban

Forêt Paisible propose aux tout-petits un voyage nocturne dans une forêt peuplée de créatures mystérieuses. Quatre voix se mêlent aux sons des métallophones pour créer un univers baroque immersif, où la musique et le jeu sensoriel éveillent l’imaginaire et célèbrent la beauté du vivant.

La torre del oro

Sun, 11 Oct 2026 18:00:00 GMT

Tickets: €12 – €34

Liège

At the foot of the Torre del Oro in Seville—where ships once set sail for the New World—flourished the music of Alonso Mudarra, the great Sevillian master of the vihuela, a string instrument of Aragonese origin related to the lute, and a pioneering figure of early accompanied solo song. Drawing on his folías, tientos, canzones and villancicos, in which popular traditions and learned writing intertwine with subtlety, Christina Pluhar and her ensemble L’Arpeggiata undertake a musical crossing of the Atlantic. The ensemble brings together the elegance of the Spanish Renaissance with the Baroque heritage of South America. From the rhythms of Spain to the pulses of the Andes, a shared history unfolds: that of a music in motion, traveling, transforming, and continuing to resonate from one shore of the ocean to the other.

The Breath of Notre-Dame

Sun, 15 Nov 2026 14:00:00 GMT

Tickets: €22

Liège

“Whether improvising or performing from memory the most demanding pages of the repertoire, Dubois displays a rare musicality among organists.” — BBC Music Magazine Titulaire of the great organ of Notre-Dame de Paris since 2016 and recognized as one of the most brilliant organists on the international scene, Vincent Dubois opens his recital with one of Johann Sebastian Bach’s most popular works, followed by pieces by leading Parisian organ composers: from Franck’s Second Chorale to the vast fresco by Maurice Duruflé on the hymn Veni Creator, as well as Saint-Saëns’s highly orchestral Danse macabre. He concludes with his own transcription of the Rigaudon, Menuet, and Toccata from Ravel’s Le tombeau de Couperin. Magnificent!

A Cello in Italy

Sun, 17 Jan 2027 14:00:00 GMT

Tickets: €19 – €24

Liège

From Antonio Vivaldi to Giovanni Sollima, three centuries of Italian music echo one another, with the radiant and virtuosic cello of Anastasia Kobekina as a narrator through time. Vivaldi blends brilliance with a festive spirit, much like Sollima’s Concerto perduto (“lost concerto”), in which, in 2021, he imagined a new work based on fragments of a cello concerto by the “Red Priest,” carefully preserved in Venice. Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach and Charles Avison extend, in their own way, the virtuosity, clarity of form, and expressive freedom of the Italian Baroque, while opening the path toward the more sensitive language of the Galant style.

Journey to Lübeck

Sat, 27 Feb 2027 18:00:00 GMT

Tickets: €19 – €24

Liège

In 1704, in the middle of winter, Johann Sebastian Bach undertakes a 400-kilometre walk to the Hanseatic city of Lübeck in order to meet the renowned organist and composer Dietrich Buxtehude. The journey begins in Arnstadt, the birthplace of Johann Michael Bach (1648–1694) and Johann Christoph Bach (1642–1703). By placing Christ lag in Todesbanden by Johann Sebastian Bach alongside works by composers of the previous generation, the programme seeks to contextualise his music and highlight its roots and development.

The Sacred Music of Mendelssohn

Sun, 30 May 2027 14:00:00 GMT

Tickets: €22

Liège

A skilful organist and excellent improviser, in the lineage of Bach and Handel whom he so deeply admired, Mendelssohn devoted a significant part of his output to sacred music. The Namur Chamber Choir explores fourteen of his motets, with organ or a cappella, pages that alternate between delicacy and strength, carried by a sincere and profound faith. Organ professor at the Luxembourg Conservatory and titular organist of the monumental instrument of Saint Martin’s Church in Dudelange, Alessandro Urbano accompanies the choir and also performs two solo organ works.