volume 3 - number 2 - sep 2017
CULTURAL WEEKEND GLOBAL AND BELGIAN FRIENDS ATTEND IN AMSTERDAM It is with great pleasure that we look
back on the cultural weekend for the orchestra’s Friends outside the Nether-
musicians Borika van den Booren (violin) and Maartje-Maria den Herder (cello).
lands, held on 6 and 7 May 2017. It was
Managing Director Jan Raes and Fund-
by Belgian, but also by Global Friends of
gramme at the orchestra’s offices on Sun-
the first such event attended not only the RCO.
The activities on Saturday took place at the Museum van Loon, the former resi-
dence of the van Loon family of Amsterdam regents located at Keizersgracht 672.
Following a word of welcome from Fons
van Westerloo, chairman of the donors’ foundation Stichting Donateurs of the Royal
Concertgebouw
Orchestra,
the
group was given a tour by the museum’s
director and curator Tonko Grever, offering a glimpse of this Amsterdam family’s
life in one of the city’s finest canal houses.
That evening, the guests dined in the museum’s stylish dining room, followed by a
chamber music performance by orchestral
raiser Barbara Ruding kicked off the proday with a presentation on RCO House, the future premises of the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, followed by a tour of the building site. The group then lunched
with a number of orchestral musicians, including hornist Laurens Woudenberg who gave an introduction to the concert
that afternoon. The programme featured the Brahms Violin Concerto, which was
given a phenomenal performance by violinist Isabelle Faust and the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, and Beethoven’s
Symphony No. 3 (‘Eroica’), all under the Myung-Whun
Looking back on this successful cultural
hind-the-scenes tour of the Concertge-
for their presence and the support they
direction
of
conductor
Chung. The cherry on the cake was a bebouw.
weekend, we wish to thank our Friends give the orchestra.
RCO PERFORMS IN NEW ELISABETH HALL Thanks to the support of its Belgian
Society of Friends, the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra gave a memorable concert on 17 March 2017 in Antwerp’s Queen Elisabeth Hall, which opened its
doors at the end of last year. Many of the orchestra’s Belgian Friends and their guests attended.
Violinist Lisa Batiashvili sparkled in Shostakovich’s
compelling
Violin
Concerto
No. 1. Bruckner’s lively First Symphony
also featured on the programme. At the orchestra’s helm was Polish conductor Michał Nesterowicz.
Before the concert, an exclusive behind-the-scenes tour had been organised for our Belgian Friends, followed by a talk on the construction of the new concert hall by Jan Raes and Joost Maegerman, general manager de Filharmonie.