On Sunday afternoon, 15 June, pianist and harpsichordist Sander Leeuwenburgh will take you on a musical journey through four centuries of captivating passion. This journey begins on the harpsichord with a series of toccatas from the early Baroque by Picchi, Froberger and Bach. This is followed by two longer variation works on another popular genre from the Baroque, namely the rousing dance “La Folia” (“madness” or “folly”): a virtuoso version for harpsichord by the Italian Baroque composer Alessandro Scarlatti, followed by a moving version for piano by the late-Romantic Russian composer Sergei Rachmaninov.
Sander Leeuwenburgh (1977) started playing the harpsichord at the age of eight. He studied materials science at TU Delft and also piano with Frank Peters at the conservatory in Arnhem, where he graduated cum laude in 2005. He has been a professor of biomaterials at Radboudumc in Nijmegen since 2018 and made a comeback as a concert pianist in 2024. In 2025, he will also return to the stage as a harpsichordist, thus uniting the worlds of old and modern music.
| Program |
| Harpsichord Giovanni Picchi (1571/72-1643) – Toccata in d/g minor (from “Fitzwilliam Virginal Book”) Johann Jakob Froberger (1616-1667) – Toccata I in A minor (FbWV 101 from “Libro Secondo”) Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750) (arranged by S. Leeuwenburgh) – Toccata and Fugue in D minor (BWV 565) Giovanni de Macque (1548/1550-1614) – Consonanze stravaganti in G major Alessandro Scarlatti (1660–1725) – Variations on “La Folia” in D minor |
| Piano Sergei Rachmaninov (1873-1943) – Variations on a Theme by Corelli (“La Folia”) in d minor Op. 42 Pierre Sancan (1916-2008) – Toccata |