On the picture Irina Simon-Renes.
By John Dunkelgrün.
Since 2010 Wassenaar has had a unique music festival, the ICMF or International Chamber Music Festival.
It is not only original in concept, but of truly high quality. Now in its seventh year it is the brainchild of Irina Simon-Renes and Liesbeth Hessels. Irina is Romanian and has been living in Wassenaar for seven years. As a teenager while on a concert tour to Cognac in France, her parents, who lived in communist Romania, managed to organise her escape to Berlin. There, with the financial help of a friend of her parents and the parents of a friend, she was able to attend the Lycée Français and the Hochschule der Künste.
She was lucky to meet Prof. Thomas Zehetmair, who taught her that music is a beautiful language which needs to be handled very carefully. As a real musician, you are a medium to bring beauty into a world where there is too much ugliness. These lessons have become a red line throughout Irina’s life. She feels compelled to share the beauty of her music. While working with the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra she was thinking of what she could meaningfully do after she moved to Holland with her Dutch husband. Through a daisy chain of chance contacts, she met Liesbeth Hessels. Together with Margaret de Vos van Steenwijk they hatched the idea of the ICMF. This was not just intended to be yet another local music festival, but to bring accessible classical music of world quality to Wassenaar, and also to attract people who may never have attended a live classical music concert.
The festival has been a real success story. While the organisation is entirely in the hands of volunteers, they run it very professionally. Each year the program brings surprises and becomes a little more ambitious. Some program elements are chosen specifically to attract young listeners. This year’s program is a good example of that. The first day features a concert at the Rijnlands Lyceum by two young Syrian musicians Shaza Manla (12) and Jawa Manla (19) together with Irina Simon-Renes.
The Lyceum students will work two weeks prior to the festival on a variety of activities around Syria as well as on the concept of music and freedom. This year’s festival highlight is a major gala candlelight concert in Castle Duivenvoorde to celebrate the work of the Dutch composer Unico Wilhelm van Wassenaer, who died 250 years ago. Prof. Hans Jeekel of the Erasmus Medical Center Rotterdam will give a lecture on the curative power of music.
The traditional concert in the Dorpskerk in Wassenaar offers some of the most special works by Mozart, Prokofiev and Brahms with the principal woodwind players from the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra and an international string section. The festival ends with a spectacular family luncheon concert featuring Ukrainian percussionist Konstantyn Napolov. Children will sit among the performers. Following the concert they will have the opportunity to try various instruments and even sign up for the Music School
B+C Leiden-Wassenaar. It is Irina’s most ardent wish to introduce and welcome children and their parents to the worldwide community of music lovers.
The festival is traditionally held in May when the Wassenaar garden city is at its most beautiful.
For more information and tickets, go to www.icmf.nl.
But hurry, they go fast!
