NJO Winter Tour 2021

The NJO Winter Tour 2021 could unfortunately not take place due to the measures surrounding COVID-19 and the planned concerts in Nijmegen (Concertgebouw De Vereeniging), Eindhoven (Muziekgebouw Frits Philips), Apeldoorn (Theater Orpheus), Utrecht (TivoliVredenburg as part of the AVROTROS Vrijdagconcert) and Rotterdam (De Doelen) had to be canceled. As a result, the orchestra, conducted by the enthusiastic Antony Hermus, was unable to collaborate with the renowned Storioni Trio, which celebrated its 25th anniversary in the 2020-2021 season and was therefore invited as soloists by the NJO. Trio and orchestra would together bring the forgotten Triple Concerto by the Hungarian Emanuel Moór to the stage. The piece has most likely never been performed in the Netherlands before and it was also not to be in January 2021, but fortunately we were able to postpone the collaboration for a year and the orchestra and trio will still visit the Dutch concert halls in January 2022! The conductor will be John Wilson, about whom artistic advisor and permanent guest conductor of the NJO Antony Hermus is very enthusiastic, partly because of his extraordinary talent for working with young musicians.

Although the orchestra was unable to play, Dutch Radio 4's AVROTROS Vrijdagconcert provided a small - but very fine - plaster on the wound during the period of the original tour with no fewer than two broadcasts of recordings from the NJO. On 15 January, a recording from exactly five years earlier could be heard, when the NJO conducted by Etienne Siebens played works by Roukens and Berlioz with soloist Isabelle van Keulen. Also in this broadcast, which can be heard on the website of Radio 4: the Chimaera Trio, which gave three concerts during the NJO Muziekzomer festival of 2019.

On 22 January, the day that under different circumstances they would have played with the NJO in TivoliVredenburg in Utrecht, the Storioni Trio could be heard in a live broadcast from the Hertz hall in the same TivoliVredenburg. Later in the broadcast, this was followed by a recording of the AVROTROS Vrijdagconcert by NJO conducted by Ed Spanjaard on 24 January 2020, with Pijper's Third Symphony and Bartók's Concerto for orchestra.