Pianist Jan Michiels (born 1966) studied with Abel Matthys at the Brussels Royal Conservatory and later with Hanz Leygraf in Berlin. In 1991, he competed in the Queen Elisabeth Competition. He teaches piano at the Brussels Conservatory, where he has also directed the contemporary music class, obtaining last year a master of arts with a work inspired by Luigi Nono’s Promethea. His interests also include baroque music, although his recordings so far have mostly concentrated on 20th-century music, from Bartók to Ligeti and Kurtág. This evening’s program will include music Stanley Kubrick used for his film soundtracks. Kubrick’s choice of the Ninth Symphony in A Clockwork Orange boosted CD sales of the Beethoven masterpiece and Handel’s Sarabande seems linked to the movie Barry Lyndon. Ligeti’s Musica Ricercata No. 2, in turn, will evoke the haunted ceremony scene in Eyes Wide Shut.

Flagey