Agenda

The history of music includes thousands of works written for special occasions. A burning love, a birth, the opening of the Olympic Games, a cherished memory, or a cat or two. Big or small, serious or light: in What I Really Want to Say, the six instrumentalists of the New European Ensemble placed the ball entirely in your court, the audience’s.

It is up to composers Elizabete Beāte Rudzinska, Jasper de Bock, Alice Yeung, and Hesce Mourits to transform the most beautiful submissions into sounding notes. The result: a concert full of stories, wishes, and intentions from the audience.

So what’s on your mind?

The renowned Javanese singer and composer Peni Candra Rini—one of the jury members for the Gaudeamus Award 2026—presents her new work The Wheel for gamelan, in collaboration with the New European Ensemble. This 45-minute chamber piece reinterprets the traditional Javanese macapat cycle: eleven poetic songs in liturgical Javanese that trace the spiritual and existential phases of human life.

Rather than drawing on traditional repertoire, the work deconstructs and reconfigures the acoustic spectra of gamelan instruments, combining their distinctive timbres with the sound colours of a contemporary chamber ensemble. The resonance, overtone structures, microtonality, and cyclical temporality of the gamelan form the generative core of a new musical language. A piece in which the New European Ensemble invites you to dare to listen and discover an innovative interplay.

2026 marks the centenary of Ton de Leeuw’s birth. During the Gaudeamus Muziekweek, the New European Ensemble and The Hague Vocal Ensemble, conducted by Angeliki Ploka, present a program centered around De Leeuw’s conception of music as a ritual act.

Midare, written for the Japanese marimba player Michiko Takahashi, is a virtuoso exploration of the instrument. The title (‘free’, ‘unorthodox’) refers to the open structure of the work, in which divergent playing techniques converge and the boundaries of what is executable are pushed to their limits.

In Invocations, the relationship between text, sound, and meaning takes center stage. The Latin texts are primarily drawn from the Psalms and the Missa pro defunctis, structuring the work from the De profundis clamavi ad te, via the Libera me, Domine, to later invocations such as Miserere mei. An instrumental interlude forms a turning point, after which the Gregorian melody is introduced and further developed, featuring a prominent role for both the choir and the solo voice. The work culminates in a concluding Amen.

Invocations is conceived as the third part of a trilogy, alongside Car nos vignes sont en fleur and And they shall reign for ever (both 1981). The three works are linked by their biblical texts and by a shared musical approach, which De Leeuw himself described as ‘extended modality’: a cyclically structured sound field, partly inspired by non-Western traditions such as raga, maqaam, and patet. In this music, sound does not appear merely as form, but as the bearer of a deeper, cohesive whole.

Steve Reich’s The Desert Music is an impressive choral and orchestral work that connects poetic language with the threat and uncertainty of its time. The title and lyrics are drawn from William Carlos Williams, whose words Reich brought together into one vast, breathing soundscape, based on Williams’ collection The Desert Music and Other Poems.

There is, however, more hidden behind that landscape: Reich deliberately chose texts from Williams’ post-Hiroshima and Nagasaki period, a time when ‘the bomb’ hung like a shadow over the world. The music reveals how human dreams and desires collide with the questions raised by our conscience—a tension that forms the heart of The Desert Music. ‘The desert’ remains ambiguous: a physical place, an inner emptiness, or a vision of the future.

Led by the Hague concert hall Amare, the ensembles NKK, Klang, HIIIT, New European Ensemble, and Het Muziek join forces with the Royal Conservatoire to celebrate his 90th birthday with a performance of his magnum opus, The Desert Music.

In this theatrical concert, musicians from Aleppo join forces with the New European Ensemble to bring the rich musical traditions of their city to life. Together, they paint a new soundscape in which the ancient city comes into motion; ancient voices echo from houses of prayer and coffee shops, while car horns blare and the air carries the scent of coffee, pepper, and cinnamon.

A Ticket to Aleppo offers a warm-blooded musical dialogue between Arabic and Western traditions, showcasing the city’s enduring vitality. In this performance, the ecstasy and spirituality of Aleppo converge with Western timbre, harmony, and form. Instruments such as the oud, qanun, and riq are seamlessly woven together with violin, viola, cello, and flute.

Spoken word and narrations will be in English.

Resistance is more than an act; it is a voice that demands to be heard. In the moving song cycle Voices from 1973, composer Hans Werner Henze gives the floor to twenty resistance poets from across the globe. Written in the shadow of the Vietnam War, this ninety-minute masterpiece stands as an impressive tribute to the human spirit. New European Ensemble performs this timely work under the baton of conductor Carlo Boccadoro, alongside soloists Carina Vinke (alto) and Peter Tantsits (tenor). The instrumental line-up is unique: in addition to their own instruments, the musicians collectively play about seventy different instruments from various worldwide traditions — from Africa and Asia to South America. The result is a profound soundscape that invites the listener: dare to listen, dare to discover.

Henze himself was an outsider who left Germany for Italy, fleeing both homophobia and the strict musical laws of his contemporaries. He regarded Voices as his own ‘Lied von der Erde’, concluding with a hopeful vision: a pre-Columbian flower festival dreaming of a world at peace. This autumn, New European Ensemble brings this extraordinary composition to the Romaeuropa Festival. It is a rare opportunity to experience one of Henze’s most haunting works, in which the cry for justice resonates as loudly today as it did fifty years ago.

Pinokkio begint, zoals elk kind, als een onbeschreven blad – in haar geval als een
onbeschreven blok hout. Maar zij heeft nog maar net benen gekregen of ze laat haar vader
Geppetto in de steek en loopt in zeven sloten tegelijk.

Mevrouw van der Vos, Meneer Kats en Meneer Das worden haar vrienden, en hebben
mooie, aanstekelijke verhalen. Maar kan zij deze vrienden vertrouwen? Steeds moet zij
kiezen: lol maken en lekker lui leven of verstandig zijn en hard werken? Een mooi verhaal
opdissen of de lelijke waarheid vertellen?

Van haar vrienden leert Pinokkio de voordelen van liegen tot ze inziet dat zijzelf óók in de
maling wordt genomen.

‘Is het wel waar? Doe niet zo saai!
Lieg tot alles leuker wordt, lieg alles aan elkaar
Lieg los en vast,
totdat het in je straatje past
Lieg de oren van hun kop
met bla bla bla bla bla
Lieg maar, lieg maar, lieg maar!

In Visions, vocalist and curator Elaine Mitchener brings together works by composers who channel the mystical, the

political, and the deeply personal. From Gubaidulina’s radiant settings of Hildegard von Bingen’s visions to Sciarrino’s

ecstatic Infinito Nero, this program explores music as revelation; spiritual, ancestral, and embodied.

Featuring voices from across cultures and generations;Raven Chacon, Julius Eastman, Njabulo Phungula, and Younghi

Pagh-Paan, Visions invites audiences into a space of radical listening, where sound becomes a form of seeing.

With his iconic composition 4’33”, John Cage invited listeners in 1952 to listen attentively to their surroundings and to the subtle sounds of their own heartbeat and breathing. Since then, new music has continuously challenged us to hear the world in new ways. Swiss composer Jürg Frey creates works that explore the boundaries of the audible. His compositions make use of sparse sonic material and silences, turning silence itself into the subject of the music. The result is an invitation to reflect and to experience sound in a renewed way.

A sneak peek behind the scenes: composer Jörg Frey shares more about his piece during a rehearsal with the NEuE.

With this program, the New European Ensemble reflects on the work and legacy of Sofia Gubaidulina (1931–2025), one of the most influential composers of the past century. Throughout her long career, she developed a musical language entirely her own, where spirituality and sonic exploration come together in service of emotional power.

At the heart of the program are two works from different phases of her oeuvre. In Hommage à T.S. Eliot for soprano and ensemble, Gubaidulina responds to the poetic world of Eliot’s Four Quartets, a text she described as “an effortless bridge to music.” The work demonstrates how literature and music complement each other in exploring time, memory, and meaning.

The second work is Repentance, written for cello, double bass, and three guitars. Here, Gubaidulina explores the rich sonic possibilities of this unusual instrumentation, featuring two of her favorite instruments, guitar and double bass, in the leading roles. In doing so, she creates driving gestures in which the three guitars bring forth a surprisingly orchestral sound.

Set between these two pieces is the world premiere of a new work by American composer Michael Hersch, commissioned by the New European Ensemble for oboist Christopher Bouwman. Although Hersch has developed a musical voice entirely his own, he shares Gubaidulina’s fascination with dark, mysterious sounds and with music as a vessel for existential questions. The world premiere of this new oboe concerto places Gubaidulina’s oeuvre in dialogue with a prominent composer of today.

In times of uncertainty, we look for ways to give meaning to loss, hope, and change. Music can play a unique role in this: as a prayer, a ritual, or a moment of reflection.

In Prayer & Stillness, the New European Ensemble presents a program where spiritual traditions and contemporary sounds meet. The concert opens with Max Bruch’s poignant Kol Nidrei, based on an ancient Jewish prayer melody. In Arvo Pärt’s famous Fratres, a musical call for brotherhood unfolds, while Djuro Živković’s intimate Psalms for Jacob features the guitar as an instrument of contemplation.

With Kate Moore’s Incantation, the program takes on a dark and intense character. The highlight of the evening is Sofia Gubaidulina’s impressive Repentance, a work for cello, double bass, and three guitars, in which profound emotional power is combined with a quest for reconciliation and inner transformation.