Following the 20th anniversary edition last year, established and young musicians will meet again from 9-24 August 2014 to rehearse and perform together in a variety of venues – the Baroque Moritzburg castle, the Transparent Factory of Volkswagen in Dresden, the Frauenkirche Dresden, Saxony’s oldest and biggest vineyard estate Schloss Proschwitz, as well as a hangar of the Elbe aircraft factory Dresden.

You can browse the complete programme here.

This year’s composer-in-residence will be Swiss Siemens Prize winner David Philip Hefti, who has been commissioned with a string sextet for the festival. His orchestral work Adagio was premiered by the Montreal Symphony Orchestra and Kent Nagano in March 2014. Furthermore, musicians such as violinists Baiba Skride and Mira Wang, violist Hartmut Rohde, cellist Guy Johnston, pianists Martin Stadtfeld and Lise de la Salle, baritone Peter Schöne and actress Marie Bäumer will follow artistic director Jan Vogler’s invitation in 2014.

For the ninth time, 38 music students from around the world will form the Moritzburg Festival Orchestra to rehearse and perform orchestral works and chamber music – this year under the direction of cellist and conductor Heinrich Schiff.

A focus of the 2014 festival program will be on compositions of past centuries which were inspired by folk music, including works by Brahms, Martinů, Kodály and Haydn. The performance of Bach’s “Art of the Fugue” in Dresden’s Frauenkirche, commented by German actress Marie Bäumer from the perspective of Anna Magdalena Bach promises an extraordinary experience. The 2014 festival repertoire also includes Shostakovich’s and Mendelsohn’s string octets and Dvorak’s and Brahms’ string sextets.

Please visit www.moritzburgfestival.de. 

For the 20th anniversary issue of the Moritzburg Festival, artists such as violinist Midori, violist Nils Mönkemeyer, soprano Juliane Banse and pianists Alice Sara Ott and Kristian Bezuidenhout and many more will follow artistic director Jan Vogler’s invitation to Moritzburg near Dresden this summer. Wolfgang Rihm will be the composer-in-residence.

Please find the festival program here: http://www.moritzburgfestival.de/english/index.html

Among this year’s concert venues is a hangar of the Elbe aircraft factory Dresden, and furthermore the familiar baroque halls of the Moritzburg castle, Dresden’s Palais im Großen Garten and the famous Frauenkirche, as well as the Transparent Factory of Volkswagen. You can also visit an anniversary exhibition about 20 festival years at the Moritzburg castle.

In 2013, the Moritzburg Festival academy orchestra will be directed by Eric Jacobsen, conductor of the New York chamber orchestra The Knights, and present the gala concert with Midori on 11 August, among others.

Just in time for the festival, Sony classical will release the sixth Moritzburg Festival Ensemble CD, with Jan Vogler, pianist Hélène Grimaud et al.:

“Dichterliebe”
Robert Schumann
Dichterliebe op. 48
Fantasiestücke op. 73
Hélène Grimaud – piano, Jan Vogler – cello
Andante und Variationen op. 46 for 2 pianos, 2 celli and french horn
Jan Vogler, Christian Poltéra – cello
Juho Pohjonen, Martina Filjak – piano
Johannes Dengler – french horn
SONY Classical (August 2013)

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.