Bertrand Chamayou (photo Foppe Schut)

20 years of Muziekgebouw!

A conversation with managing director Boudewijn Berentsen

June 2025
Text: Eric Schoones

The concert hall for new music has been around for a few years now and is still a unique venue, with a distinctive program and more than formidable acoustics. We speak with Managing Director Boudewijn Berentsen.

By training, he is a political scientist, but around the age of twenty, he says he was “captivated by classical music,” and in 2008 he therefore started as managing director at the Muziekgebouw. Still, his passion for programming never left him - even after becoming general director in January of last year. For many years, he programmed very intensively together with Frans Bernard van Riel. These days, there’s a “programming collective.” “With five or six people, we sit together and determine the overall direction. That way, we create support and align closely with marketing, because you also have to ask yourself whether people will actually want to come and hear all your beautiful plans.”

^{Boudewijn Berentsen (photo Foppe Schut)}

When Boudewijn Berentsen started at the Muziekgebouw, he just barely had the chance to experience its founder, Jan Wolff, albeit from a distance. Wolff was a musical jack-of-all-trades: a horn player in the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, but also, together with his wife, the driving force behind a groundbreaking center for new music, De IJsbreker. “That space could hold about 130 people, and Jan dreamed of a larger hall. He moved heaven and earth to make the Muziekgebouw, with a hall for 725 listeners, a reality. And he succeeded! His plan was entirely driven by acoustics. With movable floor and ceiling elements, an ideal acoustic environment can be created for many different ensembles, and even for choirs, for example.

It’s well known that Marc-André Hamelin once said you could wake him up in the middle of the night for a concert at the Muziekgebouw. “Yes, he’s someone with an enormous repertoire and adventurous programs, ideal for us. We’ve also hosted Leif Ove Andsnes several times with special programs. He was actually a bit surprised that we accepted his program, which included a completely unknown sonata by Geirr Tveitt, without hesitation. And in the coming season, he’ll be performing with Bertrand Chamayou, who, by the way, played a phenomenal Vingt regards sur l’Enfant-Jésus by Messiaen here last season. They’ll be performing Schubert and Kurtág together, not necessarily something other venues are lining up for, but when two world-class stars want to play it, who am I to say we wouldn’t want that?”

^{The Grote Zaal (photo Martina Simkovicova)}

Next season there will also be room for the younger generation with Dmytro Choni and Saskia Giorgini. “Certainly, we hope to build something with them, but in the meantime we do not forget the established names. Recitals by, for example, Pierre-Laurent Aimard and Elisabeth Leonskaja have always been highlights for me. They have such depth in their playing, which only comes with a lot of experience. I am also looking forward to Fazil Say, who will surely make something special of the Goldberg Variations and also plays his own work. Another highlight for me is Piotr Anderszewski, truly a grandmaster, and then of course Melnikov, who is returning with Preludes and Fugues by Shostakovich. The program of Antonii Baryshevskyi is also really a program that fits like a glove, with rarely heard etudes by Maxim Shalygin, embedded between well-known etudes by Chopin, Liszt and Debussy. We still attach great importance to new music and each season we have about 25 world premieres.”

Outside the Piano series, there is also plenty for piano lovers. “I’ll just mention Maria João Pires, who will perform the Winterreise together with Matthias Goerne. The day after his recital, Melnikov will also perform the piano quintets of Shostakovich and Weinberg together with the Quatuor Danel.”

^{Alexander Melnikov (photo Harold de Smet)}

Boudewijn Berentsen is also a loyal visitor to the concerts himself. “It’s no hardship, I love music immensely, and I believe that if you program something yourself, you simply have to be there. And even if you’ve had a busy day, I always come out of a concert feeling completely recharged. It’s so beautiful to see the musicians afterward, still caught up in the glow of the performance. I really enjoy that.”

This article was published in Pianist magazine.