Haydn. The Seasons.

Cancelled.

With a heavy heart we inform that the two concerts with Vox Luminis and Giovanni Antonini on February 19 & 20 are cancelled. Ticket holders will be contacted personally by Concertgebouw Brugge.

Giovanni Antonini joins Anima Eterna and Vox Luminis to celebrate the twentieth anniversary of the Concertgebouw Brugge. In 2001, as a brand-new house orchestra, Anima Eterna had the honour of playing Joseph Haydn’s The Creation, conducted by Jos van Immerseel, in this spectacular concert hall. Now, precisely twenty years on, Anima Eterna marks this special anniversary with another of Haydn’s great oratorios, The Seasons. As in the case of The Creation, Baron van Swieten provided Haydn with the libretto, a lively ode to rural life: the wonder of spring, the magic of a promising summer morning, the colourful joy of harvest in autumn and the still mist of winter. The elderly Haydn toiled at this work for two years, but in the end delivered a score which skips through the four seasons with youthful enthusiasm. As a celebrated interpreter of Haydn’s symphonies, Giovanni Antonini has succeeded in precisely capturing this spontaneity. An unequalled team of soloists – with Thomas Bauer (bass), Yves Saelens (tenor) and Christina Landshamer (soprano) – gives voice to the bucolic songs in this moving idyll. 

“In Haydn there is always something that remains to be rediscovered, that has not been set down on paper. It is up to us to keep on formulating new answers.” – Giovanni Antonini 

The first collaboration between Antonini and Anima Eterna in 2021 involved a programme of Italian and Viennese music. The orchestra remains in the same region with the Viennese Joseph Haydn, who also achieved unprecedented popularity in England. The Seasons therefore gained an English libretto alongside the German. In the seasons to follow, Antonini has opted resolutely for nineteenth-century opera and we find ourselves back in Italy.