20 January 2025

The Dutch National Student Orchestra (NSO) will play a unique programme at Stadsgehoorzaal Leiden on the 20th of February at 20:15. The NSO is a national project orchestra full of ambitious and talented students. For a month, they put aside their regular studies to challenge themselves to study a difficult repertoire in just ten days. After that period, the tour begins: 13 concerts in the Netherlands and two foreign cities. The theme of NSO 2025 is ‘madness’.

Programme

Led by the fantastic conductor Chloe Rooke, the NSO 2025 will perform Hector Berlioz's masterpiece Symphonie Fantastique to you, as well as William Walton's extraordinary Viola Concerto. Dana Zemtsov stands before the orchestra as soloist, to join the orchestra in honouring this piece. Especially for the NSO, composer Karmit Fadael has created a commissioned composition called Ludus. After an animated rehearsal period, the tour will start on 16 February 2025.

Tickets for students are priced at €12,50 and for non-students at €27,50.
For more information about the programme, take a look a the NSO website.

Theme

This much-encompassing term fits, in several ways, perfectly with our NSO project. To begin with Hector Berlioz's grotesque five-movement work. In Symphonie Fantastique, we are gradually transported, far beyond the boundaries of reality and realism, from a simple crush and into an obsession, a world where an unrestrained fantasy rules: madness. Isn't it madness that 90 students set aside their studies for a month to devote themselves entirely to music? In the current political situation of the Netherlands, it is also a particularly topical word. Declining financial support for music associations has made projects harder to realise. The emergence of all but new uncertainties is causing real damage to the accessibility of culture.