The Ragged Music Festival (the brainchild of the two young Russian pianists Pavel Kolesnikov and Samson Tsoy) reaches a deeply affecting apotheosis with a star-studded performance of Olivier Messiaen’s Quatuor pour la fin du temps. Messiaen composed this gripping plea for peace in a German prisoner-of-war camp, where he was interned in June 1940. The music of Alfred Schnittke and of Morton Feldman, master of silence, is likewise connected to death and to the inexorable passage of time in human life. HIIIT performs Schnittke’s Lebenslauf in collaboration with Kolesnikov.

Messiaen’s famous quartet is a religiously inspired vision in which an angel brings time to a standstill. But it is also a monument to life, resonating with imitations of birdsong and warm harmonies. That same warmth, and the underlying melancholy for all that makes the world beautiful, is also present in the wondrously consoling Andante from Schubert’s most famous piano trio. With Piano Phase, Rosas and choreographer Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker pay homage to the American minimalist Steve Reich.

The final day of the Ragged Music Festival (the brainchild of two young Russian pianists, Pavel Kolesnikov and Samson Tsoy) begins with a high-energy morning concert: The Rite of Joy. Our percussion drives both pianos forward in a Spanish-flavoured rhapsody by Maurice Ravel, propelled by the fire of castanets. Equally exhilarating are the surging waves with which the two pianists sweep the listener along in Philip Glass’s minimalist classic Mad Rush. The tightly hand-clapped rhythms of Steve Reich’s Clapping Music are also a highlight, in excellent hands with the percussionists of HIIIT and the dancers of Rosas.
Classical balance reigns in Mozart’s radiant Sonata for Two Pianos in D, a key he associated with the warmth of summer. Violinist Alina Ibragimova appears in a set of variations by Olivier Messiaen, in which his ideas about the blending of colour and harmony resonate so powerfully that the music can almost be experienced as colour itself—the way Messiaen heard all music.

Let loose at this Minimal Rave on King’s Night and dance to the music of Philip Glass and Louis Andriessen.
This standing concert in the Conservatoriumzaal of Amare in The Hague promises to be an unforgettable experience. First, immerse yourself in the finest minimal music by Philip Glass, then really let go to the danceable, high-energy Hoketus by our Dutch star composer Louis Andriessen.

In Hoketus, the core element is the hocket technique. Characteristic of this technique—already used in the Middle Ages—is that the notes of a melody are distributed among several players. The ensemble in Hoketus is divided into two identical groups (consisting of pan flute, tenor saxophone, Fender piano, piano, and congas), which complement each other and therefore never play simultaneously. Yet there is a twist: in harmonic and melodic terms, Hoketus offers a spicier, more pungent variant of American minimalism.

For the first time in almost ten years, Louis Andriessen’s visionary masterpiece can be heard again in the Netherlands! De Materie (1984–1988) is a musical spectacle of unprecedented proportions: 63 musicians on stage, four movements based on texts from four centuries, and a monumental opening of 144 chords performed by the full ensemble.

Music in Similar Motion is one of the first minimalist works by composer Philip Glass. He wrote it in 1969 for his own Philip Glass Ensemble. The title already hints at what happens: the musical lines all move in the same direction, but not always exactly in unison. The piece is built from short melodic building blocks – “cells” – that are repeated over and over. Only when one of the musicians gives a small cue does the ensemble move on to the next cell.

Because the harmony, tone color, dynamics, and tempo change very little, the listener’s attention is naturally drawn to what does shift: the rhythm. Glass was inspired in this by Indian music. In Western music, rhythm often arises from fixed patterns and recurring accents. Glass took a different approach: he built his music from small rhythmic units that he strung together into larger structures. “In Western music we divide time, as if slicing a loaf of bread. Indian music takes small units – ‘beats’ – and strings them together to form longer time values,” says Glass.

Especially for the Spotlight Festival, the The Hague-based ensembles Klang and HIIIT will once again perform this beautiful work together on the stepped landscape of Amare. The concert is free for everyone to attend!

Dive into the minimal-music universe of Steve Reich with HIIIT and Het Muziek (formerly Asko|Schönberg). This psychoacoustic trip for 18 musicians marked Reich’s definitive breakthrough in 1976—and in 2025, it still sounds just as potent! In the opening minutes, more torrential harmonies emerge than in all of his previous works combined.

Reich paused his earlier extreme minimal experiments to create a vibrant, energizing composition in which every instrument seems to stake its claim to the spotlight. From the ethereal female voices to the rumbling clarinets and driving percussion, everything seamlessly merges. What unfolds is a hallucinatory tapestry of rhythmic pulses and powerful melodic lines that never let go of your attention. Music for 18 Musicians is proto‑techno: a tight, swinging trip that pulls you deep into its fold.

Research shows that birds in the city sing louder than in nature. That finding could just as easily have been a note in one of Olivier Messiaen’s notebooks. For hours, he would lie stretched out in the grass, listening to their chirping. During long walks in the forest, he meticulously notated their melodies. Messiaen also wanted to capture the surrounding environment in sound—for instance, how the canopy carries sound depending on how dense or open it is. The spectral composer Tristan Murail once said: “Messiaen likes to ‘color in’ the passing of time.” In Oiseaux Exotiques, you can take that quite literally. According to Messiaen himself, he translates the bright colors of exotic birds from around the world into swirling rainbows of music.

In Talisker, premiered in Antwerp Central Station for Antwerp 93, it is the resonant architecture of the railway cathedral that inspired the composer. Ideally, Luc Brewaeys would have loved to hurl a metal trash can from the roof’s rafters to the ground—just to marvel at the prolonged echoes. Instead, five soloists, a percussion ensemble, and an extensive clarinet choir engage in a fascinating play with the acoustics of the concert space (including crashing cymbals). The resulting sound world is so rich that, as a listener, you’re sometimes unsure of what you’re actually hearing. The clarinets pick up the sound of the metal percussion instruments, and vice versa, stretching the echo further and making it more expansive. Brewaeys also invented new sound phenomena. As a spectralist, he colors his tones with so-called multiphonics, allowing the overtones of a sound to shimmer audibly. Unusual instruments like a whirly tube are no exception, nor are extended playing techniques. Brewaeys’ musical imagination seems inexhaustible. Perhaps the divine drink referenced in the title had something to do with it?

Chirping birds against a colorful sky, an exceptional glass of whisky—one thing and another leads us to Scotland. Composer Genevieve Murphy was born there. Not on the wild Isle of Skye (home of the smoky whisky Talisker), but on the east coast, in Dundee. Her brand-new work The Angel’s Share travels from the lowlands to the highlands, paying tribute along the way to the unspoiled natural beauty of her grandmother’s homeland. A 300-mile hike in five minutes for brass and percussion.

What does it mean to be human in a world where other forms of intelligence also exist? Audiovisual artist and composer Zeno van den Broek poses this question at a time when artificial intelligence is evolving at lightning speed. His latest work, Ways of [ ], is more urgent than ever.

In Ways of [ ], Van den Broek brings humans and machines together in a single musical and visual experience. He composed the piece for two innovative music ensembles – HIIIT and Percussions de Strasbourg – as well as for four digital “musicians”: self-playing percussion machines that perform autonomously while also responding live to the human percussionists. To musically train these digital entities, Van den Broek fed their algorithms with rhythms from industrial history: think steam engines, looms, and other mechanical systems. In this way, the digital players learn – just like humans – from their predecessors and from their musical environment.

Ways of [ ] is an audiovisual composition that feels like the emergence of a new kind of shared intelligence. You see and hear the digital and human musicians gradually learning to understand each other: hesitant at first, then increasingly fluid. In three largely improvised sections, the players discover their own voice and eventually find a shared musical language.

With Ways of [ ], Van den Broek invites the audience to reflect on what intelligence truly is – and what it means to be human.