Festival Musiq3: where Schubert meets Xenakis

As the Osseghem Park is shaking to the danceable beats of Couleur Café, a different kind of festival takes over the area around Flagey: the classical music three-day event of French-language radio station Musiq3, although that term does not do the line-up justice. Rather, the Western art music canon acts as the seed from which a particularly colourful programme sprouts. “It's a mad world,” the festival slogan says. Well, this line-up looks more outlandish than a Lewis Carroll tea party.

The Brussels Quatuor MP4 interweaves their performance of Schubert's string quartet Der Tod und das Mädchen with the hip-hop dancers of 2MAD; Anthony Romaniuk pumps some 1970s into a song recital with his Fender Rhodes piano; five brass players from Geneva offer us some Swiss folk. There is a clown in musician Pierre Lordet's children's show, and Rémi Decker has a stop-motion puppet in his.

Then there are the musicians who dare to go all the way: pianist Carlos Cippelletti who brings his lasagna-style jazz, Afro-Cuban folk, soul and classical music to the stage and jazz singer Sinne Eeg who does standards on a double bass with Thomas Fonnesbaek.

But please do not let that make you think that the programme endlessly expands in all directions. In fact, precisely because everything starts from a solid repertoire, this ship sails a straight course for three days. Of course, there is also room for performances with a more traditional flavour, but even then there is a sprinkling of spice. The moving Renaissance recital by Théotime Langlois de Swarte and Thomas Dunford takes you to the court of Charles II.

On the other side of music history, Vassilena Serafimova and Laurent Delforge end with their tribute to Iannis Xenakis. The home team of the Brussels Philharmonic provide a majestic final chord by performing film music by Bernstein, Herrmann and Rózsa... In short, at Festival Musiq3 it is never just classical.

FESTIVAL MUSIQ3
24 > 26/6, various locations, www.lesfestivalsdewallonie.be