At the Heart of Europe's Musical Creativity
In 2012 between 5 and 15 September Festival Maribor is once again staging a wide range of fresh musical overachievements in Maribor and its partner cities (Ptuj, Dornava, Prevalje and Velenje) under the vigilant eye and ear of the artistic director Richard Tognetti. 17 concerts of the main festival programme and 3 accompanying concerts will be performed by over 200 musicians from all over the globe. Among them you will find the Grammy-award-winning group Il Giardino Armonico, flautist Giovanni Antonini, violist Diemut Poppen, violoncellists Giovanni Sollima and Monika Leskovar, pianists Dejan Lazić and Martin Forrmenti that will also be joined by many other eminent instrumental and vocal soloists and choirs. Furthermore, the festival orchestra will bring together musicians from acclaimed Slovene and foreign orchestras and will also perform with the conductor Marko Letonja. At the closing concert under the colossal arches of the Maribor Cathedral the festival family will also be joined by the soprano Aleksandra Zamojska and the Croatian Radio Television choir. The festival namely does not invite groups with prepared concert programmes, but individual high-class musicians that, according to the selection of the artistic director, form different groups and perfect their performances directly at the festival.
In addition, we have also prepared performances for the enthusiasts of contemporary music streams. As every year, the festival again prides itself on a wide selection of pieces that have never before been performed on Slovenian stages and we again look forward to a composition commissioned by the festival, this time written by Vasko Atanasovski.
Everything described above leaves no doubt that the Festival Maribor will in September again be the heart of Europe's musical creativity, which gets confirmed every year by many critics, among them John Allison from the London Telegraph that rated the Festival Maribor with four stars and described it as "one of the best European summer festivals". Come and join us!