The 20th edition of Ludwig van Beethoven Easter Festival (Wielkanocny Festiwal), which is currently one of the largest and most important music events in Poland, takes place this year on 12-25 March in Warsaw. The opening concert on March 12 at the Warsaw Philharmonic Hall with the Ninth Symphony conducted by Jacek Kaspszyk was a great success. Elżbieta Penderecka, director of the festival and wife of well-known Polish composer, received a great review from Pizzicato, calling this great opening concert of this 20th season her “personal triumph”. This year’s program offers to the audience a great Polish and international artists to revive some of the most beautiful compositions of classical music. To name a selection of what you can look forward to : The Tonhalle Orchestra Zürich (for the first time in Poland) with virtuoso pianist Yefim Bronfman ; NDR Sinfonieorchester Hamburg with the conductor Krzysztof Urbański (hailed as a star of classical music) and legendary baritone Thomas Hampson ; also the recently formed Santander Orchestra, which will perform under Maestro Jerzy Maksymiuk with Szymon Nehring, the only Polish finalist of the 17th International Fryderyk Chopin Piano Competition in Warsaw, the Emerson String Quartet, the Shanghai Quartet, and the Szymanowski Quartet.

As a special concert this year, an event not to be missed, is a late evening concert at the Fabryka Trzciny, where the ensemble led by the remarkable French clarinetist Michel Lethiec will present the “Evening in New York” - program featuring musical hits from Leonard Bernstein’s West Side Story and George Gershwin’s Porgy and Bess. And also, at the finale of this year’s Beethoven Festival, you can hear Krzysztof Penderecki’s Saint Luke’s Passion performed on the 50th anniversary of its premiere and led by the composer himself.

The Festival also offers, as every year, an exhibition which presents this year musical manuscripts at the Jagiellonian Library in Kraków.

Adela Pudlakova-CR Pictures : Bruno Fydrich