After Us

An evening where music explores fragility, memory and our relationship with time. From the exhilarating energy of Jessie Montgomery’s Starburst to the hypnotic intensity of Max Richter’s November, presented in Belgium for the first time, the programme unfolds as a soundscape that is both powerful and deeply sensitive, with each work offering a new perspective. The music...

An evening where music explores fragility, memory and our relationship with time. From the exhilarating energy of Jessie Montgomery’s Starburst to the hypnotic intensity of Max Richter’s November, presented in Belgium for the first time, the programme unfolds as a soundscape that is both powerful and deeply sensitive, with each work offering a new perspective. The music of Ravel and Britten enters into dialogue with the more contemporary voices of Philip Glass, Grażyna Bacewicz, Steve Reich, Jessie Montgomery, Jóhann Jóhannsson and Hildur Guðnadóttir, creating a journey between movement and stillness, energy and silence, light and darkness.

Krzysztof Penderecki’s poignant Threnody to the Victims of Hiroshima is one of the most striking moments of this musical journey, while Good Night, Day by Jóhann Jóhannsson and Hildur Guðnadóttir extends the exploration into an intimate, suspended and deeply evocative sound world.

The concert then moves into a dialogue between music and image, with a new film by young Belgian filmmaker Dimitri Sterkens, created especially for this project and accompanied live by the BNO. Developed in collaboration with ONDRAF (the Belgian Agency for Radioactive Waste and Enriched Fissile Materials), the film invites us to reflect on the long-term future of nuclear waste and our responsibility towards a legacy that extends far beyond our own time.

Between motion and stillness, between threat and contemplation, a sonic landscape unfolds — one that resonates with our time, our world, and the one we will leave to the next generations.

Thanks to the players of the National Lottery and to the Tax Shelter of the Federal Government of Belgium through Casa Kafka Pictures.