‘Belgian National Orchestra’

Before diving into a sultry jazz club, the red plush seats of a cinema beckon. The New Year gets off to a promising start with a performance by the breakthrough talent Elim Chan, who made her successful debut last season with the Belgian National Orchestra. Viennese waltzes, swinging jazz and catchy film scores provide unexpected encounters and musical fireworks at the beginning of 2019.
The Thirties were an exciting period for the Russian composer Shostakovich, as silent films suddenly became a thing of the past and directors sought out new and fresh sounds to breathe life into their fantasies on the silver screen. Shostakovich, who went on to compose more than thirty film scores, experimented with new instruments like the flexatone, which also influenced the first jazz suite that he composed in 1934.
The score of Suite No. 2 (1938) was destroyed during World War II. A piano score was rediscovered in the late 1990s however and lost parts were reconstructed.  Shostakovich added a new, playful twist to jazz, adding references to Yiddish theatre and gypsy music.