Last saturday, I was in Amsterdam to attend the Prinsengrachtconcert.

This is a classical music concert held on an actual canal in the centre of Amsterdam. The atmosphere was fantastic, with lots of boats bunched up close together and many hundreds more people (there were some 1,500 in all) along the canal and on the bridges.

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This year, the festival celibrated its 25th anniversary with theperformance of world-renowned pianist Lang Lang. He played extremelywell: there was such an amazing a mixture of ferrocity and gentleness and not tomention his incredible speed and accuracy. He just blew me away!

Portrait of Lang Lang

Earlierthat evening I also came across a rock band that was playing from ontop of their own 60’s Pontiac Bonneville cabrio. It turned out thatthey were playing for a wedding on. What a great location that was: onthe middle of a bridge over a canal in Amsterdam. Brilliant!

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Sadly, I didn’t get a chance to find out the name of the band; they were rockin’!

Anyway, Lang Lang played the following:

  • Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart: Piano sonata KV 330, part 1
  • Nicolai Rimsky Korsakov: The flight of the bumble bee
  • Frededric Chopin: Nocturne in Des gr.t.
  • Franz Schubert: Marche Militaire, featuring Lucas Jussen (piano, 4 hands)
  • Franz Liszt: Liebestraum, S 541, number 3
  • ‘Horses’, arr. Lang Lang and Lang Guo-ren, featuring Lang Guo-ren on the erhu (video:quicktime 134kb)
  • Franz Liszt: Hungarian Raphsody, number 2 in cis kl.t. (arr. Horowitz) (video:quicktime 234kb)
  • Robert Schumann: Traumerei from Kinderszenen
  • Aan de Amsterdamse Grachten (video: quicktime 234kb)

Watch the Prinsengrachtconcert online! (controls in Dutch)