Grafenegg Music Festival 2023
Grafenegg Music Festival 2023
A place where all exists in harmony: In Grafenegg, the summer of 2023 will be all about the whole experience. From the Midsummer Night's Gala with the Tonkunstler Orchestra to the Festival finale with the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra, the artistic direction of Rudolf Buchbinder created an arc of impressive concerts. Once you've been there, you'll want to come back!
This Festival will begin with the Tonkunstler Orchestra conducted by Yutaka Sado playing Mendelssohn’s «Midsummer Night’s Dream», a title that sums up the Grafenegg Festival. The mischievous spirit continues with «Till Eulenspiegel’s Merry Pranks».
Two days later, more Romanticism in a matinee with the Festival Strings Lucerne and Kian Soltani as soloist in Schumann’s Cello Concerto. It begins with Honegger’s «Pastorale d’-été», another homage to summer.
Music from Russia is central to European culture and to the Grafenegg Festival each year. After this year’s opening, Rudolf Buchbinder takes to the Wolkenturm with the Kyiv Symphony Orchestra, now based in Germany, and a programme that features Ukrainian music, in solidarity with the beleaguered nation. Russian composers take their place in the programmes of guest orchestras including the London Philharmonia and the Vienna Philharmonic. Manfred Honeck and the European Union Youth Orchestra play the Fifth Symphony by Shostakovich, who learned of his sister’s deportation to Siberia while writing it. Santtu-Matias Rouvali and Markus Poschner conduct Tchaikovsky; Vladimir Jurowski and Jakub Hrůza conduct Rachmaninov. Audience favourite Sergei Dogadin performs Tchaikovsky’s sublime Violin Concerto.
As always, at the Festival spotlight contemporary music: the 2023 programme includes not just current Composer in Residence Philippe Manoury but also his predecessor from 2014, Jörg Widmann. The Concertgebouworkest under Iván Fischer performs excerpts from his cycle «The Hot Heart». Kirill Gerstein plays Thomas Adès’s Piano Concerto and Daniel Harding conducts the Mahler Chamber Orchestra in George Benjamin’s Concerto for Orchestra – both Grafenegg premieres.
This year’s soloists include Pierre-Laurent Aimard, Denis Kozhukhin, Anna Prohaska, Christian Tetzlaff and Daniil Trifonov. An operatic concert on the last Festival weekend features the Orchestra e Coro del Teatro alla Scala under Riccardo Chailly and excerpts from Verdi’s operas.
About the Grafenegg Music Festival
The Grafenegg Festival is one of Europe's most important orchestra festivals. Music, nature and architecture blend into an all-embracing work of art. The artistic director is pianist Rudolf Buchbinder. The festival's program consists of symphonic and chamber music as well as recitals. International guest orchestras are performing as well as the Austrian Tonkünstler Orchestra, which serves as orchestra in residence. The first festival started on 23 August 2007 and lasted until 9 September 2007.
The annual festival takes place on the grounds of Grafenegg Castle. Two venues have been built particularly for the festival in the park of the castle: The open-air stage Wolkenturm (capacity 2,000 in total, opened 2007) as well as the new concert hall Auditorium (capacity 1,372, opened 2008).
High-calibre classical concerts against a wonderful backdrop: Grafenegg, situated between Vienna and the Wachau valley, has risen within the space of a few years to be a festival venue of international renown, delighting people from all over the world season by season with its unique atmosphere. In the middle of the enchanting castle park stands the impressive Wolkenturm (Pillar of Clouds) open-air arena, rated one of the best outdoor stages in the world for its acoustics. Grafenegg matches this excellence with the region’s best wines, like Grüner Veltiner, and dishes. These can be tasted at various locations on the Grafenegg estate, such as the new garden pavilion «Wolke 7» (Cloud 7) and the Wine Lounge or at a picnic in the castle park.
Alongside a full summer programme of classical and modern music, beginning in mid-June with the star-studded Midsummer Night’s Gala and ending in mid-September with the Grafenegg Festival, Grafenegg is an all-year-round venue for a wide variety of events attracting more than 150 000 people annually to the romantic castle campus. For decades now, the «Grafenegger Advent» has been one of Austria’s liveliest Christmas markets; with its «Schlossklänge» cycle, the Tonkünstler Orchestra of Lower Austria provides orchestral concerts throughout the year. The highlights are the festive concerts for Christmas, New Year’s Eve and Easter.
