Festival returns to the Royal Castle in 2024
We are delighted to announce:
The 24th Music Gardens Festival will take place in the Concert Pavilion in the Grand Courtyard of the Royal Castle in Warsaw. Tickets will be sold by ebilet.pl.
The Musical Gardens Festival will take place between 29 June and 27 July 2024 at the Concert Pavilion in the Grand Courtyard of the Royal Castle in Warsaw. The festival returns to the place where it was traditionally held for more than twenty years.
The 24th edition invites you to 13 exceptional concerts, and 17 film screenings of operas and ballets.
As every year, the festival programme will include film screenings of operas, ballets and musical films, as well as live concerts. Over the 29 festival evenings, the programme will include 30 events, including: 17 film screenings and 13 live concerts, represented in such large numbers for the first time in the event’s history.
Graj Ogrody! to tytuł celowo niejednoznaczny. Odnosi się oczywiście do sztuki gry na instrumentach, wirtuozerii, sprezzatury i improwizacji – podobnie jak poprzednie dwie edycje festiwalu (Śpiewaj ogrody! 2022 i Tańcz Ogrody! 2023) celebrowały sztukę głosu i sztukę tańca.
Play Gardens! is a deliberately ambiguous title. It obviously refers to the art of playing instruments, virtuosity, sprezzatura and improvisation – just as the previous two editions of the festival (Sing Gardens! 2022 and Dance Gardens! 2023) celebrated the art of voice and the art of dance.
Play Gardens! also refers to the pastimes, amusements and games, sometimes sporting competitions, indulged in during the summer in gardens and parks over the centuries. The festival will offer a very broad cross-section of genres: from early music, piano recitals and vocal opera performances, through 20th century big-band classics to contemporary and recent music, but also pop-opera and computer game music! The spirit of fun, playing with conventions, sometimes even gambling, but also – quite seriously – high artistic quality will be present in each concert. Among the well-known and much-loved works will be min. Among the well-known and popular works will be Antonio Vivaldi’s Four Seasons in a recomposition by Max Richter (4 July), George Gershwin’s Blue Rhapsody in its first, original version from 1924 (5 July), Ludwig van Beethoven’s Ode to Joy – the final movement of Symphony No. 9 in a setting for two pianos (24 July), the most famous arias from Giacomo Puccini’s operas (27 July) and Canto ostinato – a legendary work of European minimalism (3 July).
Among the stars of the 24th edition of the festival will be outstanding ensembles from abroad: the Norwegian Barokksolistene headed by the baroque violinist Bjarte Eike and the Parisian Umlaut Big Band, and from Poland: the NFM Orchestra Leopoldinum – Wrocław under the direction of violinist Alexander Sitkovetsky, the Hashtag Ensemble and the Chopin University Big Band under the direction of Piotr Kostrzewa. Among the soloists – pianists: Marcin Masecki, the duo Hyuk and Hyo Lee, Waldemar Malicki, Adam Kośmieja and Martyna Zakrzewska; vocalists: Iwona Sobotka and David Baños in the Puccini project, Dorota Szczepańska with the Lamento project, young singers from the Opera Academy of the Grand Theatre – National Opera and the pop-opera trio Tre Voci. And the increasingly popular video game music will be performed by the Heroes Orchestra.
The programme of film screenings will be dominated by one of the greatest operas in the history of music – the work of Giacomo Puccini, whose 100th anniversary of death falls in 2024. Accordingly, the most important items of Puccini’s repertoire will be presented, such as La Bohème, Tosca, Turandot and Madama Butterfly. The series will be complemented by a final concert entitled Tribute to Puccini performed by Iwona Sobotka.
The Festival is co-financed by the Capital City of Warsaw
The festival is co-financed by the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage from the Cultural Promotion Fund within the framework of the ‘Music’ programme, implemented by the National Institute of Music and Dance”.
Organisers: Musical Gardens Foundation
Co-organisation: Orfeo Foundation, Royal Castle
