Dear Friends,

A very happy welcome to the 21st iteration of this wonderful journey on the path to music! 

21 years is in Belgium the legal age of maturity, and we are tonight making every effort to show you the contrary! Joji has again managed to mesmerise us with a music voyage from Bach to The Beatles which this church is going to remember for a long time…! You will immerse yourselves in classical music’s beauty and hum along and laugh with some well-known pop songs. To Joji goes our immense gratitude and we owe him the joy of this concert, even if this year he took Amélie as his programme creative-assistant, another proof that he listens to the NextGen, proud father of his son Lenny as he is !

As parts of the world have been pushed in the devastating embrace of war and suffer under terror attacks, we don’t forget suffering populations; while we are here to celebrate friendship, family and peace in a wonderful setting, we count our blessings and we won’t forget to foster dialogue, harmony and solutions rather than encourage hatred, find differences and promote suffering. Music remains a guide for that, ans as we sit in this church to create harmony and joy, let’s vote for peace and let’s help however and whenever we can our fellow humans !

As every year, it a a great joy to rejoin forces with our incredibly kind & world-renowned musician friends again in Lauenen, Nina, Alexej and Stepan and welcome the ones who come for the first time, Juliette our star singer coming from the Volksoper in Vienna, Yu and Piotr. A huge thanks to all of them for their most versatile performance of tonight !!

And finally, a word of thank you to Family and Friends: tonight a little over half of us is of the younger generation, the other half being the young-since-a-longer-period-of-time generation, and the latter thanks the former for sharing this time with us and giving us your views and opinions: we value it immensely and we learn from you !!

 An organisation like this takes quite a bit of attention and management, and I’d like to thank from the bottom of my heart my darling Andrienne, Léopold & Isabel, all the Arenberg cousins, family members and friends who support the LCCA with both their organisational skills and good mood: you are the life of the party and we feel privileged to be here tonight with you ! 

And now to the music !

Etienne d’Arenberg
for the Lauenen Chamber Concerts Association