The sixth edition of the International Music Festival of Central and Eastern Europe Eufonie opens a new chapter in its history. This year’s festival features masterpieces, early and contemporary music, experiments, transformations and modern interpretations. For the first time, concerts will be held  not only in Warsaw but also in other Polish cities: Cracow, Lusławice, Lublin, Katowice and Dębica. Also for the first time, the festival programme includes concert versions of operas, featuring the premiere of Krzysztof Penderecki’s The Black Mask at the Teatr Wielki – Polish National Opera. The official opening of the Eufonie Festival will take place on the same stage with the participation of world-famous mezzo-soprano Elīna Garanča. It will be her first performance in Warsaw. Other stars – both Polish and of international acclaim – have also accepted our invitation to participate in the festival. From 2 November to mid-December 2024, we invite you on a musical journey through our European region and through Poland. Artists from Lithuania, Latvia, Slovakia, the Czech Republic, Croatia, Armenia, England, France, Germany, the USA and Switzerland will be our guides during this year’s musical expeditions.

Diversity and richness of repertoire remain a characteristic feature of Eufonie. As always, the festival offers a varied range of works combining the past with the present and proves that historical musical traditions can still inspire contemporary artists. The repertoire of this year’s edition is also a dialogue between tradition and modernity, which is an emanation of musical ideas overlapping over the centuries. The National Centre for Culture Poland, the festival organiser, thus tries to attract to concert halls both classical music lovers and enthusiasts of new sounds, younger audiences looking for alternative sounds in music.

This year’s festival repertoire is divided into three main sections:

• Altersounds (Skalpel, Dobrawa Czocher & Guests, Gurdjieff Ensemble, Kwartludium & Jacaszek, Operomanija, La Tempȇte);
• Masterpieces (Elīna Garanča, Heroines of Polish Music, jubilees of Joanna Wnuk-Nazarowa and Paweł Szymański, works by Karol Szymanowski, Krzysztof Penderecki, Paweł Mykietyn);
• Music of the Past (Venceslao, re di Polonia by Antonio Caldara performed by {Oh!} Orkiestra and soloists, performances by The Sixteen, Marti & Gondko, Solamente Naturali, Bastarda).

This year’s Eufonie have been enriched with an introduction. The June Eufonie – Prelude concert, with the participation of Adam Strug and the Monodia Polska ensemble, will have a surprising, premiere continuation in November. This will be a performance by the Skalpel duo, who, on a special festival commission, will present their own original interpretation of the pieces performed by Strug and Monodia Polska in June (which were recorded at that time). The Prelude can also be considered a preview of the diverse programme – it includes music of the Middle Ages, Renaissance and Baroque in the interpretation of such outstanding artists as Bastarda, The Sixteen, Corina Marti and Michał Gondko and the Solamente Naturali ensemble. In September, the second event preceding the festival took place: Eufonie – Prologue: Kochanowski Wika / Strug / Monodia Polska.

Other special festival commissions were entrusted to: Dobrawa Czocher, who will perform the world premiere of works inspired by Johann Sebastian Bach’s cello suites and the Bastarda ensemble, which  will present songs from Valentin Triller’s Silesian Songbook. The concert of the Kwartludium ensemble featuring Michał Jacaszek will also be an extremely interesting event. The artists will present sounds inspired by the rich tradition of ancient Colchis.

The inspirations that permeate this year’s Eufonie programme extend far beyond Central and Eastern Europe. On our musical journey, we travel to the sources of Latin and Arabic culture, to the Middle East. One of the examples of such an expedition will be the performance of the Gurdjieff Ensemble, abounding in Armenian tradition and the spirit of the Orient. In turn, during the symphonic concert Night Fairy Tales, with the participation of Iwona Sobotka and the Choir and Orchestra of the Warsaw Philharmonic conducted by Michał Klauza, we will hear Songs of a Fairy-Tale Princess, Op. 31 and Song of the Night, Op. 27 by Karol Szymanowski, but also the expressive Dance of the Seven Veils from Richard Strauss’s opera Salome.

The festival has been accompanied by Krzysztof Penderecki’s works since its first edition. This year it will be a performance of Seven Gates of Jerusalem in the interpretation of the Orchestra and Choir of the Karol Szymanowski Philharmonic in Cracow, the Polish Radio Choir and excellent soloists: Iwona Hossa, Karolina Sikora, Anna Lubańska, Rafał Bartmiński, Artur Janda and the narrator, Sławomir Holland. This piece will take us symbolically to Jerusalem, the cradle of three religions. We invite the festival audience to the concerts in three Polish cities: Warsaw, Cracow, and Dębica.

The festival will also feature Paweł Mykietyn’s  St Mark’s Passion – a piece that fits into the great tradition, but also made revolutionary changes in the understanding of the genre. The festival programme also includes three operas, each of which shows a different facet of the genre. We will hear the 18^th-century opera Venceslao, re di Polonia by Antonio Caldara, inspired by the history of Ladislaus IV of Poland, The Black Mask by Krzysztof Penderecki, based on the work by Gerhart Hauptman, and the contemporary, unconventional opera Have a good day!, touching on the existential problems of women with a migrant background, working below their qualifications, in a supermarket.

During the Eufonie Festival, we will also celebrate the jubilees of prominent Polish composers: Joanna Wnuk-Nazarowa and Paweł Szymański. The Jubilee of Wnuk-Nazarowa, titled Heroines of Polish Music, will become a pretext for delving deeper into the output of female composers, from Grażyna Bacewicz to Hanna Kulenty, whose Mémoire de Mémoire will be performed in Poland for the first time.

The festival complements the Polish concert repertoire with pieces that are either unknown or rarely performed in Poland. Central and Eastern Europe, to whose musical traditions the organisers refer, is an extremely interesting and musically inspiring region. From a cultural melting pot full of inspiration, diversity flowing from the experiences of each of these countries and places, a unique story about us and our region emerges.

As every year, the festival is held under the honorary patronage of the ambassadors of the countries of the region, while the festival itself supports the policy of the Eastern Partnership and is an important tool of Polish cultural diplomacy. Moreover, the festival implements the 2030 Sustainable Development Goals.

This year, the Eufonie Festival is partnered by: Warsaw Philharmonic, Teatr Wielki – Polish National Opera, Ars Cameralis, Krzysztof Penderecki European Centre for Music in Lusławice, CODES Festival of Traditional and Avant-garde Music in Lublin, Nowy Teatr in Warsaw, PWM Edition Polish Music Publishing House (PWM), Warsaw Autumn (International Festival of Contemporary Music), Cracow Philharmonic, Adam Mickiewicz Institute. Selected concerts will be (re)broadcast by Polish Radio, which is a member of the European Broadcasting Union (EBU).