Veranstaltungen | Emsbürener Musiktage

Guest concert with international artist

Date: Tuesday, October 20, 2026 at 7:30 p.m. in the Liudger Realschule Emsbüren.

Signum Quartet

Rock Lounge: Exploring the points of contact between rock and classical music is the focus here: The musicians, who grew up with Beethoven, Mozart, Stravinsky, and Shostakovich as well as the Beatles, Queen, Led Zeppelin, and Radiohead, share a love for both genres. The idea of uniting these two worlds in one program is therefore an organic, almost natural extension of their repertoire.

There are indeed striking musical and dynamic similarities between classical music and rock music – Beethoven's overwhelming Grosse Fuge must have had a similarly intense and instinctively felt effect on the listeners of his time as Led Zeppelin did on its audience! A fundamental and often overlooked similarity is that rock music is also chamber music at its core: the joy of playing in a tight-knit three- or four-piece rock band offers a similar thrill of musical interaction and communication as playing a Haydn or Dvorak string quartet.

It is these points of intersection that Matthijs van Dijk so wonderfully captures in his arrangements and paraphrases of well-known rock songs and in his own rock-inspired works. He is a composer of contemporary music and a songwriter, drawing on his own experience as a violinist in a string quartet as well as a rock bassist and singer. This breadth of experience gives him a unique perspective on this particular type of arrangement. He retains the essence of the songs without abandoning the nuances of quartet playing, and the result often resembles a commentary or paraphrase rather than a direct transcription. Indeed, in his arrangement of Cream's "Sunshine," he weaves together musical quotations from Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, The Doors, and Bob Marley in a kind of musical trip.

The members of the Signum Quartet regularly participate in recordings for top bands (including bands like Die Fantastischen Vier and Die Toten Hosen) and have themselves played in bands – Xandi van Dijk, for example, sang and played bass and drums in various bands, often together with his brother Matthijs. As passionate musical omnivores, they enjoy the opportunity to blur boundaries and explore the deeper interconnections between the two art forms.