In anticipation of next year’s 20th jubilee, this year’s Moritzburg Festival, since 2001 under the artistic direction of the cellist Jan Vogler, is opening its doors from 5  to 19 August 2012.

Every year established artists and musical new blood meet in order to rehearse and give concerts together at a whole variety of venues, from the Baroque Schloss Moritzburg and Dresden Palais in the Grosser Garten via Volkswagen’s Gläserne Manufaktur works in Dresden, Schloss Proschwitz – Saxonys’s oldest and largest private wine-growing estate – to (this year for the first time) the Moritzburg Stud Farm.

For the first time in its history, the Moritzburg Festival has succeeded in engaging three composers-in-residence: Sofia Gubaidulina, Olli Mustonen and Jörg Widmann; in addition to their compositions, the artists themselves will be present at three discussion concerts.

Otherwise, the programme focus is on French works, and we shall be hearing works such as the First Cello Concerto by Saint-Saëns and La Creation du Monde (in the arrangement for piano quintet) by Milhaud. Among those taking part in the 2012 festival are, alongside Jan Vogler himself on cello, old and new comrades-in-arms including the violinist Mira Wang, the cellist Alban Gerhardt, the clarinettist Jörg Widmann and the pianists Lise de la Salle and Olli Mustonen.

One of the major focuses of the festival is to break through boundaries and out into new fields of expression within the field of classical music, and in this spirit the jazz pianist and composer Eldar Djangirov and his Trio will be presenting a long Jazz Night in Volkswagen’s Gläserne Manufaktur in Dresden.

For the seventh time now, the festival will be preceded by the Moritzburg Festival Akademie: some 40 music students from all over the world will be rehearsing and giving concerts with a demanding programme of chamber music in ensembles of varying formats. On 2 August the Moritzburg Festival Akademie-Orchester under the Welsh conductor Grant Llewellyn are guests at the Young Euro Classic-Festival in the Berlin Konzerthaus.

The CD ‘Die Forelle – Trout Variations’ by Moritzburg Festival artists is currently available on Sony.

Shortly after the festival, on 22 August, a Moritzburg Festival Ensemble will be playing Schubert’s ‘Trout Quintet’ and chamber-music works by Rossini and Beethoven at the Rheingau Musik Festival.

Information, videos and much more besides can also be found under www.moritzburgfestival.de.