The Hague’s Festival Klassiek achter de Duinen runs from Thursday 17 September through Sunday 20 September, placing chamber music across the city in a compact four-day frame. Its two eligible Amare listings make a particularly clear route: violinist Pieter van Loenen is part of Thursday’s opening ensemble with Candida Thompson, then returns on Saturday for a concentrated Brahms programme. The official listings locate both concerts at Nieuwe Kerk, with Amare handling the programme and ticket information. For listeners choosing one strand of a crowded weekend, this is a useful way in: follow one player as the musical scale contracts from a substantial mixed ensemble to a piano quartet.[1][2][5]

That route also fits the festival’s stated preference for close-range musical encounters. Festival Klassiek achter de Duinen presents its concerts as small-scale occasions where audiences are near the musicians, and its programme brings together established chamber repertoire with contemporary work. Thursday and Saturday show that idea through two distinct formats: an opening night built around changing instrumental groupings, followed by an evening that gives a single Brahms work the room to unfold.[3][5]

Thursday 17 September: the opening ensemble

The opening concert begins at 20:00 on Thursday 17 September. Candida Thompson and Pieter van Loenen take the violin chairs alongside violists Hannah Strijbos and José Nunes, cellists Lidy Blijdorp and Thomas Prechal, and pianist Tobias Borsboom. It is a sizeable group for a chamber-music setting, and the programme’s shape makes the personnel meaningful: Thomas Beijer’s 2013 Motion Games and Rebecca Clarke’s 1921 Piano Trio lead into Tchaikovsky’s Souvenir de Florence.[3]

The sequence gives the evening a sense of expanding perspective. Beijer’s contemporary piece places a living Dutch composer at the start; Clarke’s trio narrows the focus; Tchaikovsky’s Souvenir de Florence provides the six-player culmination. Van Loenen’s presence therefore works as a line through varied textures, from the collective force of the final sextet to the precision required by the earlier chamber settings. The festival also schedules a free tune-in session before the concert, offering programme context directly from the musicians.[3]

This is the broader, public-facing end of the guide. The line-up contains two violas, two cellos and piano around the two violins, making it a concert shaped by overlap and handoffs instead of a star-soloist format. Thompson, Van Loenen and Borsboom reappear in the festival’s wider programme, a sign that these dates have been assembled as an ongoing conversation among players.[3][5]

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Saturday 19 September: Brahms in close focus

At 20:00 on Saturday 19 September, Pieter van Loenen joins violist Lotus de Vries, cellist Anastasia Feruleva and pianist Thomas Beijer for An Evening with Brahms. Amare lists it as classical music and chamber music, while the festival frames the night around Brahms’s Piano Quartet No. 3 in C minor. Short excerpts from Clara and Robert Schumann and Brahms’s Intermezzo, Op. 117 No. 1, prepare the main work.[2][4]

The programming has a welcome sense of proportion. Instead of a wide historical survey, the concert gives its central quartet a defined context: the Schumanns appear in fragments, the Brahms intermezzo offers a small preparatory scene, and the Piano Quartet No. 3 carries the evening’s weight. Amare says the performance includes spoken explanation around the music, and the event language is Dutch. A post-concert Brahms and classical-music pub quiz follows in the Nieuwe Kerk basement.[2][4]

Van Loenen’s Thursday-to-Saturday shift is the point. On the first date, he is one voice within a seven-player opening line-up; two days later, every instrument in the quartet has greater exposed responsibility. Beijer supplies another thread between the evenings, appearing first as composer and pianist, then as pianist in the Brahms group. This pair of dates offers a concise portrait of how a festival can build continuity through musicians instead of repeating a single format.[2][3][4]

Plan the route

Choose Thursday 17 September at 20:00 for the opening concert featuring Candida Thompson and Pieter van Loenen, then return on Saturday 19 September at 20:00 for An Evening with Brahms led by Van Loenen’s quartet. Both are listed through Amare and take place at Nieuwe Kerk in The Hague; the festival’s own pages confirm the 17–20 September schedule. Check the official Amare and Festival Klassiek achter de Duinen pages again before travelling, since times, ticket availability and practical arrangements can change.[1][2][3][4][5]

Sources

  1. Agenda — Amare
  2. An Evening with Brahms — Pieter van Loenen, Lotus de Vries, Anastasia Feruleva and Thomas Beijer — Amare
  3. Openingsconcert — Festival Klassiek achter de Duinen
  4. Een avond met Brahms — Festival Klassiek achter de Duinen
  5. Festival Klassiek achter de Duinen — Festival Klassiek achter de Duinen