The 50th anniversary of Dmitri Shostakovich’s death will be commemorated worldwide in 2025. This event will characterise the International Shostakovich Festival Gohrisch, which for the past 16 years has been the only annual festival dedicated to the great composer. Once again, music fans from near and far will make a pilgrimage to the small health resort of Gohrisch in the heart of the Saxon Switzerland national park, where in 1960 Shostakovich composed one of his most important works: the Eighth String Quartet.
The fact that the Shostakovich Festival has firmly established itself on the international circuit in just a few years is due in no small way to the Staatskapelle Dresden, which co-initiated the event and has supported it artistically from the very beginning. Following the example of the Staatskapelle’s chamber music concerts, all artists in Gohrisch continue to waive their fees, accepting only a symbolic sum of € 10. This has not deterred renowned artists from getting involved. Quite the opposite: Igor Levit, Gidon Kremer, Yulianna Avdeeva, Matthias Goerne, the Borodin Quartet, the Quatuor Danel, Michail, Vladimir and Dmitri Jurowski as well as many others have come to Gohrisch out of sheer dedication to the festival and its music-making.
The festival, which enjoys the support of the State of Saxony, works closely with the Shostakovich Archives in Moscow and Paris, which still regularly provide the Shostakovich Festival with new works from the pen of its namesake. In recent years, audiences in Gohrisch have enjoyed more than a dozen world premieres. For the anniversary year, further rarities and little-known pieces will be performed by leading Shostakovich interpreters on the stage of the concert barn.
In addition to these new and unfamiliar pieces, audiences in 2025 can once again look forward to an exciting programme over the four festival days offering unusual or fresh perspectives on Dmitri Shostakovich 50 years after his death.
The non-subscription concert given in Dresden by the Staatskapelle on the eve of the Shostakovich Festival has, since its inauguration in 2016, become something of a tradition. In 2025, the concert will be conducted by the talented young French maestra Marie Jacquot, who, together with pianist Kirill Gerstein, will present both of Shostakovich’s piano concertos at Dresden’s Kulturpalast.
The programme and list of performers for the 16th International Shostakovich Festival Gohrisch will be announced in the spring of 2025. Please visit www.schostakowitsch-tage.de for more information and to book tickets.
In July 1960 the Soviet composer Dmitri Shostakovich, one of the towering figures of 20th century classical music, spent several days in Gohrisch, lying forty kilometres south-east of Dresden and the oldest health resort in the nature reserve known as »Saxon Switzerland«. In the official GDR state guest house he wrote one of his most important chamber music works, the String Quartet No. 8 in C minor, Op. 110, a piece which proclaimed in devastating fashion his suffering at the hands of the Soviet regime. The composer’s private papers indicate that this is the only work which he composed outside of the Soviet Union. In 1972 Shostakovich made a second trip to Gohrisch.
In June 2009 a charitable society was founded (»Shostakovich in Gohrisch e.V.«) with the aim of increasing public awareness of the composer’s visits to Gohrisch. With the energy and commitment of its members, the society has now founded a three-day festival to bring Shostakovich’s music back to Gohrisch. The first International Shostakovich Festival Gohrisch will be held in September 2010, exactly 50 years after the composer’s first visit to the resort. This festival will currently be the only annual event on the classical music calendar specially dedicated to the Russian composer.
An initiative of the Staatskapelle Dresden
Three days – three concerts. The organisers decided to base the length of the festival on the time taken by Shostakovich to compose his Eighth String Quartet while staying in Gohrisch from 12th to 14th July 1960. The festival concerts will feature performances of this string quartet and the Chamber Symphony Op. 110a, which is the famous arrangement of the quartet by Rudolf Barshai. In addition, the programme includes discussions with artists and contemporaries of Shostakovich, as well as lectures and guided tours. The »International Shostakovich Prize Gohrisch« will be awarded to persons who have specially dedicated themselves to the study and performance of the works of Shostakovich.
The Staatskapelle Dresden, which helped to initiate the festival and is closely involved in the creative development, will ensure its high artistic calibre – in cooperation with the »Chamber Music« of the orchestra. The Minister President of the Free State of Saxony, Stanislaw Tillich, as well as the former principal conductor of the Staatskapelle and close friend of Shostakovich, Kurt Sanderling, have agreed to act as festival patrons.
Detailed information under www.schostakowitsch-tage.de
