Close-up: Widor and Bruckner

Bruckner

Born 200 years ago, Anton Bruckner was originally an organist but developed into an ambitious composer of vocal church music and large-scale symphonies. Chamber music was not his heart – or was it? His only mature chamber music work, the grand String Quintet, contains a world of ideas and, despite its symphonic proportions, is written much more compactly than his symphonies. You wish he had left behind more chamber music!

Charles-Marie Widor

Twenty years later, Charles-Marie Widor was born in France – he was also an organist and a composer. It was not without reason that he was sometimes called 'Bruckner's brother'. But unlike the Austrians, Widor wrote a great deal of chamber music in addition to symphonies. Shortly after Bruckner's death, he wrote the Second Piano Quintet, a work full of yearning and melting Romanticism. It is surprising that it is not performed more often.

About Close-up

In the chamber music series Close-up, musicians from the Concertgebouw Orchestra play self-composed programmes in the Small Hall. Each one is a special one-off concert that cannot be heard anywhere else. The way to experience the individual qualities of the orchestra musicians! The intimate concerts are organised by the Friends of the Concertgebouw and the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra.