Introduction

Towards Europe: Festival delle Nazioni’s Musical Journey
The 59th edition of Festival delle Nazioni marks the second chapter of the three-year artistic journey launched in 2025 to reinforce the Festival’s international outlook and foster an ever deeper dialogue with Europe’s great cultural traditions. Following France, the country honoured in 2025, the Festival now turns to Germany and the German-speaking world, continuing a cultural itinerary that will culminate in 2027 with a celebration of Europe to mark the Festival’s 60th anniversary.

The 2026 edition invites audiences on a journey through the musical and cultural landscapes of Germany and the German-speaking world, from the great centres of Central Europe—Berlin, Potsdam, Munich, Vienna and Salzburg—tracing the evolution of German culture from the Enlightenment to the present day. The programme explores Germany’s pivotal role as a cradle of the Enlightenment, a driving force in musical modernity and a fertile ground for artistic innovation, revealing the enduring dialogue between tradition and experiment, music and the other arts.

The Festival’s musical itinerary begins with the world of Johann Sebastian Bach, whose music forms the heart of the opening concert. It then moves to the enlightened court of Frederick the Great in Potsdam, where the remarkable encounter between Bach and his son Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach unfolded, before continuing through Vienna and Salzburg with Mozart, Beethoven, Mahler and Schoenberg, and concluding with Kurt Weill, whose work embodies both the extraordinary creative vitality of the Weimar Republic and the artistic freedom profoundly tested by the upheavals of the twentieth century.

The programme brings together chamber concerts, interdisciplinary performances and specially conceived productions, entrusted to internationally renowned artists and ensembles alongside an outstanding new generation of performers. In doing so, the Festival reaffirms its identity as a place where generations, artistic languages and cultural traditions meet in dialogue.

The Festival’s Artist in Residence for 2026 is the pianist Ramin Bahrami, who will appear in the opening concert and in two projects devoted to Johann Sebastian Bach: An Evening at Sanssouci, inspired by the historic meeting between Bach and Frederick the Great, and the world première of Bach Dance Concert – Indoor, a new production created in collaboration with the Zappalà Danza Company. Joining Bahrami are Elio, presenting The Reappraisal of Sadness; Robert Lehrbaumer; Tamás Érdi; Luigi Piovano; the Wiener Kammersymphonie; the Bavarian Brass Sextet Ensemble Classique; the Quartetto di Venezia; the Yablonsky Trio; and the Salzburg String Trio. The programme spans the great masters of the German and Central European tradition—from Johann Sebastian Bach, Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert, Brahms, Mahler and Schoenberg to the twentieth century of Kurt Weill and Erich Wolfgang Korngold, alongside works by contemporary composers.

Through this journey, Festival delle Nazioni once again transforms its host region into a meeting place where history, memory and contemporary creativity converge. Germany’s rich musical heritage—and, more broadly, Europe’s shared cultural legacy—is presented not as a monument to the past but as a living tradition, capable of illuminating the present and inspiring new perspectives for the future.

This path leads naturally to the Festival’s 60th edition in 2027, dedicated to Europe itself: an opportunity to celebrate six decades of artistic achievement while reaffirming the Festival’s founding vision as an open forum for dialogue between cultures and artistic languages, united by the universal power of music to foster understanding, discovery and shared experience.