To our dear Festival friends and audiences

The sixteenth chamber music festival which took place in capacity halls last  September was an outstanding success, the concerts acclaimed both by audiences  and critics. The artists noted repeatedly how much the warm and enthusiastic  atmosphere enhanced their performances, and expressed their desire to return to  Jerusalem as part of the ‘Festival Family’.

The theme of the Festival was the profusion of quintets composed for an  ever-varying combination of instruments, and also marked fifty years since  Hindemiths’ death and the centenary of the births of Britten and Lutosławski.

We are now completing plans for the seventeenth chamber music festival  which is due to take place from 4.9.14- 13.9.14.

The detailed programme will be published in the near future, but we are  already able to promise you a wonderful array of artists – both those known and loved from previous visits and those for whom this will be their first visit  both to the Festival and to this country and whose participation we anticipate  with interest and curiosity.

This year the world is marking the centenary of outbreak of World War 1  and fifty years since the birth of Richard Strauss. These two events will, of  course, reverberate in our Festival alongside well-known, stimulating and beloved  compositions and no few surprises, in the best tradition of  our Festival.

Following the great success for the past two years of our chamber music  festival at the Jewish Museum in Berlin, we are at the height of preparations  for this year’s Berlin festival which will be held from 7.5.14-11.5.14. The  programme is attached with this newsletter.