Fresh Ink for Violin – Lonneke van Straalen
Classical music at the New Church in The Hague: violinist Lonneke van Straalen takes the stage alone with a programme of freshly written and arranged works for violin.
One instrument, one performer, a full programme. Lonneke van Straalen presents the violin as a medium for stories being told right now, by composers who are writing today. The set includes works by Nils Frahm, Minna Svedberg, Kika Spangers, Anne-Maartje Lemereis, Jeffrey Bruinsma, Matthias Bartolomey and Gijs Idema, alongside a prelude from Bach's first cello suite and Les Barricades Mystérieuses by François Couperin. In quick succession: intimacy, polyphony, sonic experimentation. The programme has no fixed centre of gravity, but shifts constantly between styles and moods.
Lonneke van Straalen at the New Church in The Hague
Van Straalen has built a reputation not just as a performer, but as someone who actively repositions classical music. In 2017 she founded collective Pynarello, aimed at making classical music more playful and adventurous. That same year she received the Prix Madeleine Margot for proven artistic achievement. In 2023, Pynarello won De Ovatie, awarded by the Association of Theatre and Concert Hall Directors for the most impressive live classical music performance. In 2024 she added TheDutchBrewhouse, a platform for collaboration with artists, writers and composers outside the classical world.
Solo violin as laboratory
Fresh Ink for Violin is built around what is being created now. Not as a statement, but as a starting point: music that is still directly connected to the people who wrote it. That gives the programme a different weight than a traditional solo recital. Van Straalen performs pieces without orchestra or accompaniment, and the acoustics of the New Church bring every tonal colour into sharp focus.
