Festival 2024

Published: 02/11/2023

As in previous years, 2024 it holds special moments in store for us along with inspiring encounters and musical highlights, all in a unique ambiance.

For one last time, Yutaka Sado conducts the Tonkunstler Orchestra as its Music Director in the festival opening and Rudolf Buchbinder does the honours at the piano. The concert brings together Arnold Schönberg – the 150th anniversary of his birth falls in 2024 – and George Gershwin, two exceptional musical personalities whose work couldn’t be more different from each other but who were nevertheless linked by a deep friendship. Gershwin’s Piano Concerto in F with its jazz elements meets Schönberg’s late-romantic symphonic poem «Pelleas und Melisande», thus proving that seeming antitheses can harmonise with and complement each other. The Tonkunstler Orchestra will also be led by its new Music Director-designate when Fabien Gabel conducts the orchestra’s second Festival concert with Renaud Capuçon taking on the solo part in Maurice Ravel’s «Tzigane».

We’re particularly delighted when international orchestras return to the Wolkenturm after successful performances: in 2024 this includes renowned ensembles such as the Staatskapelle Dresden, the Gstaad Festival Orchestra, the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra, the Filarmonica della Scala di Milano and the Orchestre National de France.

The Symphonieorchester des Bayerischen Rundfunks under the direction of Sir Simon Rattle, by contrast, is a first-time guest at Grafenegg, offering us music by composers such as Thomas Adès. And there will be one of many opportunities to experience highlights of contemporary musical creativity in Grafenegg: on 28 August, Enno Poppe, Composer in Residence 2024, conducts the Tonkunstler Orchestra performing the austrian premiere of his new work commissioned jointly by Festival EIGHT BRIDGES | Music for Cologne and the Grafenegg Festival. A work by one of his predecessors as Composer in Residence will also be performed on this concert evening: Georg Friedrich Haas’s «Natures mortes». New Music is also a focus of the home concerts by the European Union Youth Orchestra and the concluding concert of the com- poser conductor workshop Ink Still Wet.

Another important aspect of the concert programme in Grafenegg are the matinees: One with baritone Andrè Schuen and pianist Daniel Heide performing songs by Johannes Brahms and Gustav Mahler promises to be a special experience. Another highlight will be the guest performance by the Chamber Orchestra Vienna – Berlin with Artistic Director Rudolf Buchbinder not only at the piano but also leading the concert.

The concert by the Filarmonica della Scala di Milano under the baton of Riccardo Chailly will also be enriched by Rudolf Buchbinder at the piano with a work by Edvard Grieg.

The final day will be a special highlight: in the matinee, Michael Tilson Thomas’s «From the Diary of Anne Frank» will have its first performance in German. Ruth Brauer-Kvam will be the speaker. The Staatskapelle Dresden conducted by Daniele Gatti with Rudolf Buchbinder at the piano will deliver the scintillating conclusion of the festival 2024 with works by Beethoven and Schumann.