Daan Vandewalle

Prelude Concert 150th Birthday of Arnold Schönberg & Charles Ives

1874 was a vintage year for Western music. Vienna saw the birth of Arnold Schoenberg – on 13 September, exactly 150 years ago – whose leap into atonality permanently shifted the boundaries of our musical consciousness. Five weeks later and several thousand kilometres away in Connecticut (US), Charles Ives came into the world. A free spirit from the start, his only faith was in his own imagination. This imagination produced radical and reckless music that fascinates from the first note to the last. 

Ferruccio Busoni – who died a century ago – is a guest at this birthday party of teachers, students and distant friends. He was also a man with wild ideas, and he had the courage to follow them.

A programme that takes in such adventurous territory requires an experienced guide. No one is better suited to do this than Daan Vandewalle, the Belgian pianist who has already taken more than a few surprising paths at Festival 20·21. Schoenberg and Ives are absolute reference points for him, and the countless innovations that in turn arose from their music are his usual habitat. So it’s no wonder that Vandewalle can make all of this ground-breaking music sound so natural and obvious.

As Part Of 13th Biennial International Conference on Music Since 1900