Here is our pick of the best classical music festivals taking place across Europe during 2024. Don't forget to also check out our useful guides to the UK's best classical music festivals, and also to the best classical festivals in Canada and the USA this year.
Best Europe classical music festivals 2024
We'll run through 2024's best European festivals country by country. Here goes.
Best classical music festivals Germany 2024
Dresden Festival
Dresden, 9 May-9 June
musikfestspiele.com
Dresden is pondering the theme of ‘Horizons’: cellist and artistic director Jan Vogler believes that the perception of classical music is changing, ushering in transformation. Over 60 events colonise some 21 venues for a festival bookended by the Royal Amsterdam Concertgebouw and the Czech Philharmonic.
Conducted by Kent Nagano, the ongoing period instrument Wagner Ring cycle reaches Die Walküre; from Bach’s B minor Mass to electro-pop duo Ätna, Dresden’s own cultural hinterland is explored; and in the German Museum of Hygiene violinist Patricia Kopatchinskaja dusts down Schoenberg’s Pierrot lunaire.
Bachfest Leipzig
Leipzig, 7-16 June
bachfestleipzig.de
There might be 16 concerts given over to the chorale-cantatas, a closing traversal of the B minor Mass by Collegium Vocale Gent and the complete solo violin Sonatas and Partitas from Leonidas Kavakos, but in a busy ten days of Bachiana numbering over 150 events, not everything is resolutely brow-furrowing. In the Market Place, Bach goes Big Band, while the Babylon Orchestra fuses music from the Middle East, jazz… and Bach. His penchant for coffee and wine is imbibed, and a Bach Forest of 129,000 trees is planned to mitigate the festival’s ecological footprint.
Munich Opera Festival
Munich, 28 June-31 July
staatsoper.de
It’s quite a statement to open an opera festival with Ligeti’s notorious ‘anti-anti-opera’ Le Grand Macabre, but for nigh-on a century Munich has not been afraid to turn heads. It’s conducted by Kent Nagano who passes the baton to Hannu Lintu for the season’s other new production: Debussy’s Pelléas et Mélisande.
All loved-up, ‘Between Caritas and Ecstasy’ is the title of a spotlight on love in the works of Wagner and Puccini. Five chamber concerts, meanwhile, include a celebration of Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, and some half-dozen song recitals feature, among others, Christian Gerhaher and Jakub Józef Orliński.
Musikfest Berlin
Berlin, 24 August-17 September
berlinerfestspiele.de
Think of Musikfest Berlin as a sort of musical alarm call, a signal that a new season beckons. The snooze button is not an option. Among the early birds are the São Paulo Symphony Orchestra and Big Band, and American visitors namecheck the Cleveland Orchestra and Kansas City Symphony. Riccardo Chailly and the Filarmonica della Scala splice Ravel’s two Daphnis et Chloé suites with Berio and Rihm, while 400 years of slavery is addressed by Jordi Savall who brings together Tembembe, Ensemble Hespèrion XXI and La Capella Reial de Catalunya.
Best classical music festivals Austria 2024
Salzburg Festival
Salzburg, Austria, 19 July-31 August
salzburgfestival.at
Along with Richard Strauss, Hugo von Hofmannsthal was one of the festival’s founding fathers, and in his 150th birthday year, his play Everyman is refreshed with a new production by Robert Carsen. Salzburg is not short of anniversaries, however.
Daniel Barenboim's West-Eastern Divan Orchestra notches up its quarter-century pairing Brahms and Schoenberg. And the latter’s 150th birthday is saluted in a ‘Time with Schoenberg’. The Bruckner bicentenary tempts Riccardo Muti to tackle Symphony No. 8 for the first time, and with the Vienna Philharmonic he’s in safe hands. The Philharmonics of Berlin and Oslo are among the visitors, while Mozart bequeaths Don Giovanni and La Clemenza di Tito to the operatic stable.
Best classical music festivals Italy 2024
Ravenna Festival
Ravenna, 11 May-9 July
ravennafestival.org
Last year’s catastrophic flooding in the Emilia Romagna region has left Ravenna ’24 reflecting on climate change, sustainability and the healing power of creativity. Screenings of Philip Glass’s Qatsi Trilogy exploring man’s impact on the natural world are accompanied by his live ensemble; and amid the mosaic splendours of the Basilica of Sant’ Apollinare, Haydn’s The Creation exercises Accademia Bizantina.
In San Vitale the Marian Consort salutes Vicente Lusitano, and the Irini Ensemble delivers Dufay. Riccardo Muti and the Vienna Philharmonic set the ball rolling, while November’s operatic postscript is devoted to Monteverdi and Purcell.
- Monteverdi: five essential works
- Purcell, Elgar, Vaughan Williams: who is your favourite British composer?
Festival Puccini
Torre del Lago, 12 July-7 September
puccinifestival.it
Puccini would have felt at home in the festival dedicated to his memory. Literally. Situated in an open-air theatre overlooking Lake Massaciuccoli, it is close both to Lucca where he was born, and to the villa he built for himself and in which he is buried.
The 2024 festival is dominated by the centenary of Puccini’s death, of course, but the year also marks the 120th anniversary of the (disastrous) premiere of Madam Butterfly – which rounds off a season embracing the early operas Le Willis and Edgar, plus Turandot, unfinished at his death.
Best classical music festivals Italy 2024
Prague Spring Festival
Prague, 12 May-3 June
festival.cz/en
For history aficionados, ‘Prague Spring’ refers to the protests of 1968. For music lovers, however, what first ‘springs’ to mind is a prestigious festival with an International Competition attached.
Tradition and innovation go hand in hand, and nothing is more traditional than the opening concerts of Smetana’s Má Vlast – this year awarded to the Berlin Philharmonic and its chief conductor Kirill Petrenko. Klangforum Wien is in residence and musters 50 pianos (and pianists!) for Georg Friedrich Hass’s epic 11,000 Saiten; Ton Koopman conducts Bach; and Collegium Vocale Gent look back to late-16th-century Italy.
Festival Janáček Brno
Brno, 1-24 November
janacek-brno.cz
Space travel meets time travel in Janáček’s opera The Excursions of Mr Brouček, and the concept of ‘no limits’ is the motto of this year’s edition of a festival that homages the composer in his home city. It’s not short on ambition.
Buttressing the ‘Year of Czech Music’, the Bamberg Symphony Orchestra commandeers Daniil Trifonov to play Dvořák’s Piano Concerto; Staatskapelle Berlin observes Schoenberg’s 150th anniversary; and a rich seam of chamber music is mined across Brno’s concert halls and villas. Opera, though, is the star, with Robert Carsen’s new production of Brouček and Staatsoper Unter den Linden Berlin’s The Makropulos Affair among half-a-dozen productions.
Best classical music festivals Turkey 2024
Istanbul Music Festival
Istanbul, 21 May-12 June
muzik.iksv.org
‘East meets West’ is more than just a geographical reality in Istanbul. For over half a century, its festival has been facilitating close encounters of a cultural kind.
The encounters also exist through time. Club culture invades a Classical Disco Night, while for those disinclined to throw some shapes there’s more traditional fare from the Budapest Festival Orchestra, Festival Strings Lucerne with pianist Maria João Pires, and a homegrown performance of Mozart’s Requiem coupled with Arvo Pärt. At the Grand Bazaar’s Kürkçüler Gate, sacred music of the Jewish, Greek Orthodox and Armenian traditions probes Istanbul’s musical roots.
- Six of the best: Arvo Pärt recordings
- Five essential works by Arvo Pärt
- Watch: Cat duets with Beethoven at the Istanbul Music Festival
Best classical music festivals Scandinavia and Finland 2024
Bergen International Festival
Bergen, Norway, 22 May-5 June
fib.no
Edvard Grieg was instrumental in nurturing what subsequently developed into the Bergen Festival, and it hasn’t forgotten him. An annual performance of his Piano Concerto is de rigueur, as are signature concerts at the composer’s house, Troldhaugen.
And in the city’s Grieghallen, this year chief conductor Edward Gardner takes his leave of the Bergen Philharmonic with Mahler’s mighty Eighth Symphony. The JACK Quartet champions composer-in-residence Øyvind Torvund, and the centenary of Luigi Nono’s birth doesn’t go unnoticed. Trio Mediaeval, meanwhile, pairs music from the early-15th-century Old Hall manuscript with modern works.
Festival O/Modernt
Stockholm, Sweden, 14-16 June
omodernt.com
Its winter festival safely navigated, violinist Hugo Ticciati and his enterprising ensemble can turn their attention to summer’s festival focus, which this year examines ‘Schubert and the Sound of Memory’. For Ticciati, Schubert is a composer whose ‘profoundly avant-garde spirit is charged with remembrance of things past’. And past meets present when the ‘Trout’ Quintet and troubled F minor Fantasie D940 rub shoulders with Max Richter, Dobrinka Tabakova and Pink Floyd.
Savonlinna Opera Festival
Savonlinna, Finland, 5 July-4 August
operafestival.fi
The death of Kaija Saariaho last year was keenly felt in her native Finland. And within the 15th-century walls of Savonlinna Castle she’s remembered in performances of her searing inditement of the brutality of war: Adriana Mater, staged by Sweden’s Norrlandsoperan.
Also visiting is National Theatre Prague, which marks Smetana 200 with The Bartered Bride. Finnish star Karita Mattila steps up to Wagner’s Lohengrin, and a new production of Verdi’s Nabucco has an ecological spin.
Rosendal Chamber Music Festival
Baroniet Rosendal, Norway, 7-11 August
baroniet.no
Taking its cue from Bartók’s Contrasts, pianist Leif Ove Andsnes’s festival has the music of Hungary in its sights. But Liszt, Ligeti and Kodály don’t have it all their own way.
JS Bach is a looming presence too, and in a year that marks the tercentenary of its first performance, the St John Passion is assigned to the Norwegian Soloists’ Choir. Joining Andsnes are friends and colleagues, including violinist Vilde Frang, Quatuor Agate and harpsichordist Masato Suzuki.
Best classical music festivals Estonia 2024
Pärnu Music Festival
Pärnu, 10-19 July
parnumusicfestival.ee
There’s more than just sea and sand to a Pärnu July. With conductors Paavo, Neeme and Kristjan Järvi the guiding lights behind an international festival-cum-academy, musical Estonia’s summer stimulates and inspires. By way of a warm-up to next year’s 90th-birthday celebrations, Arvo Pärt is handsomely represented; and festival commissions champion new music by Helena Tulve, Maria Kõrvits and Tōnu Kõrvits.
Haapsalu Early Music Festival
Haapsalu, 25-28 July
studiovocale.ee
Pärnu isn’t Estonia’s only seaside summer festival. Since 1994, Haapsalu has drawn the musically inquisitive to its ancient Cathedral and venues, including the 16th-century Jaani Kirik, for a series of choice early music concerts. Conducted by Stephen Layton, Handel’s oratorio Israel in Egypt cuts a vivid dash, and music from the Italian Baroque is entrusted to Trio Sfacciato. Albert Recasens directs La Grande Chapelle in Victoria’s Missa Vidi speciosam; and the elusive cembalo d’amore whispers sweet nothings twice over.
Best classical music festivals Ireland 2024
Blackwater Opera Festival
Lismore, 27 May-3 June
blackwatervalleyoperafestival.com
Since 2010 Wexford has not been the only Irish opera festival in town. Bestowing its favours between the grounds of Lismore Castle, a restored farmstead on the banks of the river Blackwater, and various venues including St Carthage’s Cathedral, Blackwater is going from strength to operatic strength. Marking the tercentenary of its first performance, Nicholas McGegan conducts Handel’s Giulio Cesare, and he also leads the Irish Baroque Orchestra in a Vivaldian Festival Finale. One hundred years after his death, composer Charles Villiers Stanford is reassessed in the country of his birth.
West Cork Chamber Music Festival
Bantry, 28 June-7 July
westcorkmusic.ie
From coffee concerts through to candle-lit ‘Late Night Music’, awash with talks and masterclasses, West Cork doesn’t let the grass grow under its feet. It has even turned problematic travel issues into a festival finale triumph that repurposes Messiaen and culminates in Mendelssohn’s youthful sunburst of a String Octet. Highlights include a Beethoven violin sonata cycle; a compelling Danish strand; and, uniting the Chiaroscuro Quartet and cellist Anastasia Kobekina, Schubert’s String Quintet.
New Ross Piano Festival
New Ross, 25-29 September
newrosspianofestival.com
For nearly two decades, come late September the port town of New Ross has lifted the lid on a piano festival that refuses to see things in black and white. While classical music bags the lion’s share of the programming, a distinctive Jazz Day insists that other genres apply.
Finghin Collins is very much hands-on both as performer and artistic director, and across morning coffee concerts and evening recitals the Rachmaninov anniversary was celebrated last year with pianists including Yevgeny Sudbin. Among those wending their way to County Wexford this time around are Paul Lewis and Steven Osborne.
Best classical music festivals Netherlands 2024
Holland Festival
Amsterdam, 6-29 June
hollandfestival.nl
Holland ’24 likes to think big. Not content with the 50 pianos required by Georg Friedrich Hass’s 11,000 Saiten, Bird of a Thousand Voices intrigues composer Tigran Hamasyan. Brazilian Christiane Jatahy is this year’s associate director and re-envisions Shakespeare’s The Tempest; Wu Tsang brings a hybrid slant to Bizet’s Carmen, enlisting video, choreography and additional music by Andrew Yee; and Philip Venables’s The Faggots and their Friends between Revolutions straddles all-night raves and lute song.
Best classical music festivals Spain 2024
Granada Festival
Granada, 7 June-14 July
granadafestival.org
With a roster of visiting orchestras including the Vienna Philharmonic, Orchestre de Paris and Gustav Mahler Youth Orchestra, it’s not only Granada’s architecture that is distinctly ‘Moorish’. Talent closer to home isn’t forgotten either.
Among the leading Spanish ensembles represented are Jordi Savall’s Le Concert des Nations and Orquesta Nacionales de España. Austria has caught the festival’s attention, and large-scale Bruckner plus intimate Schubert inform a programme that summons pianists Martha Argerich, Elisabeth Leonskaja, Paul Lewis and András Schiff, not to mention cellist Jean-Guihen Queyras.
Best classical music festivals Balkans 2024
Festival Ljubljana
Ljubljana, Slovenia, 20 June-3 September
ljubljanafestival.si
With Tosca and La bohème tugging at the heart strings, the Slovenian capital’s summer festival has the Puccini centenary covered. And Verdi’s Il trovatore secures an Italian operatic hat trick.
But opera is only a part of Ljubljana’s eclectic offering, which spans a Wrocław Baroque Ensemble evening devoted to the 17th-century composer Kasper Förster and a Frank Zappa Day curated by Ensemble Dissonance. Antonio Pappano conducts two concerts with the LSO; Riccardo Chailly returns at the head of his La Scala orchestra; and the Slovenian Philharmonic brings down the final curtain, with Martha Argerich in Ravel’s G major Piano Concerto.
Dubrovnik Summer Festival
Dubrovnik, Croatia, 10 July – 25 August
dubrovnik-festival.hr
As the ‘Pearl of the Adriatic’ unleashes a bumper 75th edition of its multi-arts festival, little wonder that Jordi Savall and Hespèrion XXI weigh anchor on ‘Mare Nostrum’, encouraging dialogue between Christian, Sephardic, Ottoman and Arabic-Andalucian musics.
From theatre and dance to world music and jazz, the Mediterranean proves fertile territory. The Arad Quartet, members of Bach Consort Wien, violinist Renaud Capuçon and pianist Pierre-Laurent Aimard are invited to the celebrations, which conclude with an opera gala featuring Maltese tenor Joseph Calleja.
Best classical music festivals France 2024
Aix-en-Provence Festival
Aix-en-Provence, 3-23 July
festival-aix.com
There’s a homecoming to close Aix’s operatically rich and diverse edition 2024: Monteverdi’s Il ritorno d’Ulisse in patria. And it couldn’t be more appropriate for a festival that journeys to the Japan of Puccini’s Madam Butterfly, the ancient world of Gluck’s Iphigénie, Verdi’s Sicily and the febrile landscapes of Debussy’s Pelléas et Mélisande. 2024 BBC Music Magazine Awards winner Raphaël Pichon rescues Rameau’s lost Samson, and leavening the operas are concerts including the world premiere of Charlotte Bray’s A Sky Too Small.
Itinéraire Baroque
Cercles, 1-4 August
itinerairebaroque.com
Périgord Vert is arguably less well known than the bordering Dordogne, but director of Amsterdam Baroque Ton Koopman succumbed to its charms and to the concert potential of its atmospheric Romanesque churches. The result is a Baroquefest with a difference, as bite-sized pop-up concerts lead audiences on a voyage of discovery through the region’s ecclesiastical treasures. In his 80th-birthday year, Koopman concludes the 2024 edition with Bach’s not-so-bite-sized St John Passion.
Best classical music festivals Switzerland 2024
Gstaad Menuhin Festival
Gstaad, 12 July-31 August
gstaadmenuhinfestival.ch
Enfolded by the Swiss Alps, legendary violinist Yehudi Menuhin’s festival has aspired to ever loftier ambitions following its modest debut in 1957. Four mountain-top concerts are an innovation for this year’s overarching theme of ‘Transformation’ – unfolded over some 60 concerts encompassing anything from a Bruckner anniversary nod to a DJ set.
The London Symphony Orchestra and Antonio Pappano are out of this world in the company of Holst’s The Planets; violinist Patricia Kopatchinskaja and Camerata Bern contemplate ‘Time and Eternity’; and, from Barbara Strozzi to Caroline Shaw, Kammerorchester Basel salutes Venice across four centuries.
Verbier Festival
Verbier, 18 July-4 August
verbierfestival.com
Boasting three orchestras, mentoring for soloists and chamber ensembles, an Atelier Lyrique devoted to opera and song, and an audio recording programme, the Verbier Academy is a powerhouse among summer schools. The results are stitched into a festival that opens with Simon Rattle conducting Mahler’s Third Symphony and closes with Respighi’s Roman trilogy (Pines of Rome et al) under Charles Dutoit.
Along the way, the Salle des Combins welcomes operatic Mozart and Verdi; and, stepping out for his 150th birthday, Schoenberg goes to the cabaret.
Lucerne Festival
Lucerne, 13 August-15 September
lucernefestival.ch
Flanked by the Spring Festival, May’s Piano Fest and November’s ‘Forward Festival’ rendezvous with the new, the Lucerne Summer Festival doesn’t lack for rivals. But with a dizzying promenade of visiting international orchestras, an ear-grabbing Festival Academy (celebrating its 20th birthday), plus a Festival Contemporary Orchestra, all wrapped around pukka chamber music and solo recitals, in terms of scale Summer is the winner hands down.
Musical youth has the first word as the Youth Orchestra of Ukraine adds Borys Lyatoshynsky to Debussy, Elgar and Respighi; and the Festival Orchestra continues Riccardo Chailly’s Mahler odyssey with Symphony No. 7. Schoenberg’s Gurrelieder guarantees a suitably epic finale.
Best classical music festivals Georgia 2024
Tsinandali Festival
Tsinandali, 31 August-8 September
tsinandalifestival.ge
Located in the heart of Georgia’s wine region, in just five short years Tsinandali has established itself as a festival to be reckoned with. Conducted by Gianandrea Noseda, Verdi’s Requiem launches a line-up including pianists Jeremy Denk, Boris Giltburg, András Schiff and Alexandre Kantorow, violinist Joshua Bell, cellist Steven Isserlis and clarinettist Martin Fröst. A fine vintage in the making.
Best classical music festivals Poland 2024
Wratislavia Cantans
Wrocław, Poland, 5-15 September
nfm.wroclaw.pl
The clue is in the title. Established nearly 60 years ago as a festival immersed in the singing voice, Wratislavia Cantans hasn’t lost faith with its vocal roots. But it has evolved.
And, anchored by Wrocław’s splendid National Forum for Music, it welcomes artists and ensembles such as harpsichordist Jean Rondeau, mandolinist Avi Avital and Václav Luks’ Collegium Vocale 1704 to an edition under the banner of ‘Migrations’. First up, conducted by the festival’s artistic director Giovanni Antonini, Il Giardino Armonico tackle Handel’s Il Trionfo del Tempo e del Disinganno.