The history of music is closely intertwined with the fate of great cities – bustling centers of power and money. Culture flourished where the seats of rulers, aristocratic courts, and walls of religious congregations were built. Over time, however, as cities grew and became wealthier, access to music became more democratic.

It was in 17th-century Venice that tickets for opera events began to be sold to a wide audience, and in London and Paris in the 18th century that subscription concerts were first held. In centers such as Vienna and New York, orchestras and composers established philharmonic societies to make their art independent of the patronage of the wealthiest. Performers went beyond the walls of palaces and churches to secular concert halls, performing before a bourgeois audience with an ever-growing appetite.

It was in these cities that cultural energy resonated particularly strongly over the centuries, and its impact reached across continents. Spreading throughout the world, it influenced musical fashions and attracted talented composers to the metropolises – the epicenters of these vibrations.

Our journey will cover such urban phenomena as:

  • Venice – where modern music was born, with all its genre and instrumental innovation and extravagance. It was here that the polychoral style, Vivaldi’s solo concerto and Monteverdi’s opera developed.
  • London – from Händel, through Haydn and Dvořák, to Elgar and Britten. Since the days of the steam engine, the capital of economic prosperity, with a unique ability to attract and assimilate newcomers from the musical centers of Germany, Italy and France, and to combine culture and business. The city where the concept of music agencies and subscription concert series was born.
  • Vienna – from the classics (Haydn and Mozart) to the romantics (Beethoven, Schubert, Brahms and Mahler) to the atonal modernists.
  • Paris – the 19th-century “city of lights,” virtuosos and opera, which since the World’s Fair in 1900 has become a true “capital of the world,” buzzing with new, often scandalous trends: the music of Ravel, Stravinsky and Satie, the avant-garde, jazz and film.
  • New York – a global concert scene since the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries. It soon found its own musical identity thanks to artists such as George Gershwin and Leonard Bernstein, and remains a place with a magnetic appeal to this day.

We will also visit cities whose musical image was shaped by great composers: the Prague of Mozart, Smetana, and Dvořák; the Leipzig of Bach, Mendelssohn, and the Gewandhaus; and the Buenos Aires of Astor Piazzolla. We will get to know Warsaw – though not Chopin’s, but Polish composers’ of the 20th century and… the “golden” 17th century, when Venetian-style music was heard here. We will experience the music of Armenian Yerevan and Syrian Aleppo, cities with an absolutely inimitable color and sound. Finally, we will treat the city very broadly: as a place inhabited by humanity – a cosmos, eternally bustling and encouraging exploration. Join this journey and feel the vibration of cities!

ABOUT THE FESTIVAL

La Folle Journée (i.e. The Mad Day) is the subtitle of Beaumarchais’s The Marriage of Figaro, the audacious theatre play and undisputed masterpiece of French and international literature that denounces the archaic privileges of French nobility. It is also the very same theatre play that inspired both Mozart’s The Marriage of Figaro and René Martin, who has organized numerous concerts of classical music and created a festival that turned the world of classical music upside down, making it accessible to vast audiences.

La Folle Journée was created in France in 1995, and since its beginning has been a true revolution in the world of classical music. At the moment, besides the French and Polish editions, the festival takes place in Japan. The revolutionary concept of La Folle Journée consists in a dizzying number of short concerts in the span of a few days with an appealing repertoire and affordable ticket prices. All of that attracts large crowds of new listeners to the concert halls in a spectacular fashion.

The biggest celebration of classical music in Poland

The Polish edition of the festival was initiated by Sinfonia Varsovia, which has taken part in La Folle Journée in France since its beginnings and participated in its numerous Japanese, Russian, and Spanish renditions. Every year, thousands of people gather in Teatr Wielki – The Polish Opera on the last weekend of September to listen to concerts of their choice from dozens of available events. The festival has gained the reputation of the biggest classical music feast in Poland. Many regular and occasional concertgoers spend the whole year waiting for it. It is the only festival in the country that combines symphonic and chamber concerts performed by the brightest stars of classical music with a broad educational repertoire.