De Doelen presents classic season 2025/2026
From world stars to new voices: in the 2025/2026 season, de Doelen will once again set the tone with a versatile and groundbreaking classical programme. From intimate chamber music to monumental orchestral works, with special attention to underexposed perspectives, cultural diversity and musical experiment.
International top and groundbreaking artists
The season opens in September with the European premiere of Fragments by star cellist Alisa Weilerstein. In a stage transformed into a light sculpture, she interweaves Bach suites with new compositions by contemporary composers. A musical ritual in which past, present and future come together.
One of the absolute highlights of this season is the concert by the Utopia Orchestra conducted by Teodor Currentzis. This collective of top musicians from all over the world will perform Wagner's Ring Without Words: a captivating journey along the highlights of the epic Ring cycle.
Baroque lovers will be surprised with old sounds in new forms. VoxLuminis brings masterpieces by Bach and Telemann to life in the run-up to the holidays. B’Rock Orchestra and composer Anna Meredith reinterpret Vivaldi’s The Four Seasons. And in the chamber music series, soprano Elisabeth Hetherington is heard in an intimate setting with the ADAM Quartet.
New voices and contemporary perspectives
In the thematic programme Roots, musicians such as Pavel Kolesnikov & Samson Tsoy, James Oesi & Djuwa Mroivili and Karim Sulayman & Sean Shibe give a personal response to the classical repertoire. Their programmes revolve around music and identity, tradition and innovation, with special attention to composers of colour and the relationship between East and West.
Under the motto Future Sounds of the Past, three groundbreaking compositions that were far ahead of their time are highlighted: Turangalîla by Messiaen (with the mysterious instrument the Ondes-Martenot), Stravinsky's revolutionary Le Sacre du Printemps (played from memory by Aurora Orchestra!) and Louis Andriessen's De Materie, in which music, language and science merge.
Finally, a new generation of female makers gives the classical stage new meaning. In the series Young Female Leads, Anna Lapwood, Diamanda La Berge Dramm and Her Ensemble, among others, bring back forgotten voices, break through genres and prove that authenticity is the most powerful form of expression.
View the classical season by clicking on the next button:
