The Christmas matinee takes place on December 26 th with renowned Dutch Cellist Lidy Blijdorp who joins the international debut of the Bex Music Festival from Switzerland with its co-founders, Russian concert pianist Aleksandr Shaikin, and prodigy American flutist Yunmo Zhang, combining their talent spanning three continents.

Lidy is an accomplished performer with frequent concerts at the Ijzerstaven as well as the Orchestra of the Eighteenth Century, the Concertgebouw Chamber Orchestra, the State Hermitage Orchestra of St. Petersburg, the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra of Liège and the Residentie Orchestra.

Aleksandr studied and taught at the famed Tchaikovsky Academy in Moscow and has played with major orchestras in Berlin, Zurich, Paris, Moscow, and Geneva supporting opera, ballet, theatre with other concert musicians.,

Yunmo recently graduated from the Lausanne HEMU Academy scoring its highest marks, was a finalist in the World Flute Competition with 1500 contestants, and has played with orchestras in Houston, Shanghai. Brescia and Blaricum.

This concert is co-sponsored in collaboration with the founding patrons of the Bex Music Festival, Machteld Schrama and Robert Stewart of Bex, Switzerland.

Practical information

Date and time

Friday 26 December 2025, 3 p.m.

Location

Salon de Ijzerstaven, Bickersgracht 10, 1013 LE Amsterdam, Netherlands

Excerpt from the publication « International Music Digest » published 27th December 2025

Last evening, sitting anonymously in the Ijzerstaven Concert Hall owned by Egon Schrama, a notable Dutch sculptor of towering artifacts which dot the North Holland landscape, I listened to 3 young, professional musicians. The trio consisted of a Russian pianist who trained and taught at the Tchaikovsky Music Academy in Moscow – Aleksandr Shakin, 38 ;a Chinese-American flutist who studied in Houston, Paris and Lausanne at the Hautes École de Musique scoring the highest recorded marks – Yunmo Zhang, 24; and a cellist who was given wings to fly on her instrument at Egon Schrama’s atelier for the past 5 years – Lidy Blijdorp, 37. They had never met before to display their collective talents. After a day of intensive practice, combining one million notes from three classical instruments, they sounded as if they had played together since childhood. The outside Cold War of politics melted into a warm space of Music in the Hall. 75 years of practice produced 90 minutes of musical magic.

The audience sat awe-struck for 90 minutes, as they extolled a mastery of chamber orchestral music to rival the classical era of symphonic collaboration. Playing in passionate tones with meticulous detail, they hit their notes, spacing and tempo as masters of the genre. Their timeless pieces included Georg Händel’s “Chaconne”; Pyotr Tchaikovsky’s 18 pieces for “November: On the Troika” and his Andante cantabile Pezzo capriccioso: Franz Schubert’s “Trockne Blumen” ; Benjamin Godard’s “Valse” ; and finally, a Tango from Argentina by Astor Piazzolla : Cuatro Estaciones Porteñas (4 Seasons of Buenos Aires) “Invierno Porteño”. The last piece was played with enormous passion for the Ijzerstaven’s President Jos Huber, to reflect on the life of her mother who died the day before. There was not a dry eye in the house.

This was not the staid mixture of a formal audience sprinkled with half-hearted interest in the values and appreciation of music in modern life. Instead, they included very serious, mature musicians and first-time listeners introduced to the magic and value of classical music throughout history. After the finale, the audience erupted with a standing ovation. The musicians had coaxed the value of shared emotions in all our lives. When classical music is played at the highest level of professional skill, requiring decades of the pursuit in perfection by practice, focus, interpretation and visceral displays of communication between the musicians and audience, something rare and special touches the lives of everyone in the room.