Foto: Bregenzer Festspiele/Anja Koehler
Classical Summer Festivals 2025
Summer is sounding great! The summer festivals are among the highlights of the cultural year – not just for die-hard classical music fans, but also for anyone curious to explore. Between beloved masterpieces and exciting new discoveries, there’s something for everyone – to enjoy, marvel at, or even join in! Feeling inspired? Here’s everything you need for the 2025 summer festival season: schedules, livestreams – and if you’d like to play along – the matching sheet music!
Glyndebourne 2025
The festival at Glyndebourne is one of the best-known classical summer festivals – complete with elegant park picnics. From home, you can also enjoy select productions via streaming.
Sheet music for this year's opera performances at Glyndebourne
102nd Arena di Verona Opera Festival 2025
There are few more exciting places to experience Italian opera! The nearly 2,000-year-old amphitheatre in the city of Verona offers fantastic acoustics – and ever since Verdi’s *Aida* was staged here in 1913 to mark his 100th birthday, the Arena has hosted regular opera festivals. At the 102nd Arena di Verona Opera Festival, you can expect some of the greatest Italian operas by Verdi and Bizet!
Sheet music for the operas performed in 2025:
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Schleswig-Holstein Musik Festival 2025
Whether you're enjoying a picnic in the countryside, a concert on a small estate stage, or a performance in a grand concert hall, the Schleswig-Holstein Musik Festival offers a vibrant mix of concerts in 2025. Featured artists include the Bochum Symphony Orchestra conducted by Herbert Grönemeyer, the NDR Elbphilharmonie Orchestra under Christoph Eschenbach, the NDR Vocal Ensemble with Peter Dijkstra, as well as Anne-Sophie Mutter, Mnozil Brass, Max Mutzke, Olivier Latry, Academy of St Martin in the Fields, German Brass, Louie’s Cage Percussion, Fazil Say, Grigory Sokolov, Sarah Willis, Sabine Meyer, Daniel Hope, and many more.
Festival Highlights
Missa solemnis: Pure Beethoven
At the SHMF, internationally renowned conductor Matthias Janz will present Beethoven’s masterpiece *Missa solemnis* in the Hamburg Michel with over 200 performers. The concert aims to capture the deeply moving and urgent musical expression of Beethoven’s "plea for inner and outer peace" – the theme of the work’s final movement.
Beethoven
Missa solemnis
Beethoven
Missa solemnis
Verdi’s Requiem
With a magnificent and powerful performance of Verdi’s famous *Requiem*, the Schleswig-Holstein Musik Festival concluded its very first edition 40 years ago in Lübeck Cathedral. To mark this anniversary, the festival will once again present Verdi’s monumental masterpiece – this time as the grand finale of summer 2025, featuring over 240 performers in choir, orchestra, and solo roles.
Verdi
Requiem
Verdi
Requiem
Bregenzer Festspiele 2024
The Bregenz Festival has been thrilling audiences of up to 7,000 people per performance since 1946, and from 1950 on, with its impressive floating stage. In case of bad weather, the festival can be held in the adjacent Festspielhaus. This year, the opera Der Freischütz by Carl Maria von Weber will be performed on the atmospheric lakeside stage.
Verbier Festival 2025
Founded only in 1994, the Verbier Festival in the Swiss Alps is still relatively young – yet it has quickly earned a reputation for its dedication to nurturing young musical talent. Based on a workshop model, it brings together internationally renowned artists and emerging musicians from around the world.
Festival Highlights
VFCO · Klaus Mäkelä · Sergei Babayan · Daniil Trifonov
1914 and 1945: the composition years of Sibelius’s Fifth Symphony and Bartók’s Concerto for Two Pianos frame the turmoil that marked the early 20th century. This challenging program will be performed by Sibelius’s compatriot Klaus Mäkelä and pianists Sergei Babayan and Daniil Trifonov.
Béla Bartók
Concerto for Two Pianos, Percussion and Orchestra
Jean Sibelius
Symphony No. 5 in E-flat major, Op. 82
VFCO · Teodor Currentzis · Marc Bouchkov
In his much-anticipated second concert at the Verbier Festival, Teodor Currentzis joins forces with violinist Marc Bouchkov to take audiences on a musical journey through the grandeur and emotional depth of Mendelssohn’s epic creations.
Johannes Brahms
Violin Concerto in D major, Op. 77
Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy
Symphony No. 4 in A major, Op. 90 "Italian"
Salzburg Festival 2025
This year's Salzburg Festival takes place from July 18 to August 31. Here you’ll find links to all broadcasts. We present some of the musical highlights along with matching sheet music.
Sheet music for this year’s opera performances in Salzburg:
Festival Highlights
Vienna Philharmonic · Nelsons
Conducted by Andris Nelsons, the Vienna Philharmonic performs at the Großes Festspielhaus with the Adagio from Gustav Mahler’s Symphony No. 10 in F-sharp major and Dmitri Shostakovich’s Symphony No. 10 in E minor, Op. 93.
Gustav Mahler
Adagio from Symphony No. 10
Dmitri Shostakovich
Symphony No. 10 Op. 93
West-Eastern Divan Orchestra · Barenboim
Daniel Barenboim and his West-Eastern Divan Orchestra perform at the Großes Festspielhaus Mendelssohn’s Piano Concerto No. 1 in G minor, Op. 25 with pianist Lang Lang, and Beethoven’s Symphony No. 3 in E-flat major, Op. 55.
Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy
Concerto No. 1 in G minor Op. 25
Ludwig van Beethoven
Symphony No. 3 in E-flat major Op. 55
Vienna Philharmonic · Nézet-Séguin
On August 23 and 24, Yannick Nézet-Séguin and the Vienna Philharmonic will perform works by Richard Wagner at the Großes Festspielhaus.
Richard Wagner
Prelude to the opera Lohengrin
Richard Wagner
Siegfried Idyll WWV 103
Richard Wagner
Die Walküre
Bayreuth Festival 2025
A festival theatre designed by the composer himself, perched on a green hill with unparalleled acoustics, the finest Wagnerian voices of our time – and the Bayreuth Festival Chorus performing live? You’ll find it only here. The Bayreuth Festival is dedicated entirely to the operas of Richard Wagner.
Sheet music by Richard Wagner and all works performed in Bayreuth in 2025:
New production: Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg
This year’s new production is Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg, directed by Matthias Davids. Experience Georg Zeppenfeld and Michael Nagy as Hans Sachs and Sixtus Beckmesser, and Michael Spyres as Walther von Stolzing, under the musical direction of Daniele Gatti. You can watch the premiere live via BR Klassik livestream on the traditional opening day.
Lucerne Festival 2025
The Lucerne Festival has taken place since 1938 – until 2000 under the name *Internationale Musikfestwochen Luzern* – and has thrilled audiences with world-class artists from around the globe.
Festival Highlights
Vsevolod Zavidov – Winner of the Prix UBS Jeunes Solistes 2025
This year, Russian pianist Vsevolod Zavidov (born in 2005) is awarded the Prix UBS Jeunes Solistes, worth CHF 25,000, and makes his debut at Lucerne Festival. Zavidov will perform Liszt’s twelve *Études d’exécution transcendante* – perhaps the most technically demanding cycle in the entire repertoire.
Franz Liszt
Études d'exécution transcendante
Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra | Klaus Mäkelä | Janine Jansen
At the KKL, the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra performs under Klaus Mäkelä with Mozart’s “Paris” Symphony, Prokofiev’s popular Violin Concerto No. 1, and Bartók’s *Concerto for Orchestra*. The soloist is Dutch violinist Janine Jansen.
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
Symphony No. 31 in D major, KV 297
Sergei Prokofiev
Violin Concerto No. 1 in D major, Op. 19
Béla Bartók
Concerto for Orchestra
