Dear Friends,

It is always a challenge to prepare a new programme for the Festival, hoping that you will find it beautiful, interesting, exciting and daring.

As usual, we have chosen themes from which we have built the main body of the Festival. We are proud and delighted to be celebrating the great Pierre Boulez by performing some of his emblematic works which have made musical history.

‘Brahms and 1900’ highlights Brahms's extraordinarily powerful and significant influence on the new music of the young twentieth century. Interestingly, composers such as Schoenberg, Berg, Webern, Reger and Zemlinsky, to name just a few, were influenced by both Brahms and Wagner, despite the fact that during their lives the two composers were bitter rivals and their public deeply divided. The music of Stravinsky, Debussy and Dukas, on the other hand, composed at approximately the same time, provides a fascinating contrast.

This year is also particularly rich in anniversaries of great composers such as Schumann, Chopin and Wolf, whose lieder, thanks to two wonderful singers – Robert Holl and Dorothea Röschmann - form a thread which winds its way through the Festival concerts (similar to the experiences we have shared with Bach and Carter in the past).

Our programme also includes a world premiere of a work by Matan Porat, a veteran member of our festival family. And, as usual, you will be able to discover wonderful young musicians, as well as meet old friends.

I am sure we will have a wonderful and exhilarating time together and look forward to returning to Jerusalem, to the stage of the YMCA, our musical home.

Elena Bashkirova
Artistic Director

New!
Elena Bashkirova and Friends. A brand new DVD containing selected concerts from the 2008 festival