In keeping with an established tradition, Cēsis Concert Hall will open its new concert season with the 11^th Cello Cēsis International Festival taking place on 13–14 September 2025. This year’s programme will once again invite us to discover the diversity of the cello, regarding the range both of its sound and repertoire. A concert at the Salon of the Cēsis New Castle will see the cellist Kristaps Bergs and harpsichordist Ieva Saliete take us on a musical journey from Baroque to the present day, while the festival’s Grand Concert will feature musicians from the Baltic countries joining forces to perform music by the Lithuanian composer Mikalojus Konstantinas Čiurlionis, Symphony in D Minor by César Franck and Concerto for Cello, Accordion and Orchestra by the Argentine composer Osvaldo Golijov. A new concert production Guardians of the Universe starring the MELO M cello group will be staged with the young listeners in mind.

‘As the festival is crossing the threshold into a new decade, it is an occasion for searching for new horizons while staying true to the one constant that we rely on, namely, bespoke programmes custom-made for Cello Cēsis. We will delve deeper into the cello repertoire to showcase the unique, the novel and the unprecedented. In the programme of the eleventh edition of our festival, these values will be reflected in the Azul Cello Concerto by the Argentine composer Osvaldo Golijov, a piece rarely performed anywhere in the world, the new-built Baroque-style cello by the Italian instrument maker Philipp Bonhoeffer to be heard outside the walls of the concert hall, at the Cēsis New Castle, as well as a newly staged musical show for children. The international aspect of this year’s festival will take the shape of artistic collaboration between the Baltic countries,’ reveals Inese Zagorska, the Artistic Director of the Cēsis Concert Hall.

The Cello Cēsis Festival will open on 13 September 2025 at 14:00 with a concert entitled ‘Baroque at the Castle Salon’, taking place fittingly at the Salon of Cēsis New Castle. Cellist Kristaps Bergs and harpsichord player Ieva Saliete are presenting a programme of Baroque compositions performed on a Baroque cello and contemporary pieces played on a modern instrument, thus creating a unique interplay of eras and musical instruments, both for cello solo and a cello and harpsichord duet.

Cello music from different ages will reveal the diversity of sound and expressive range of the instrument: while Geminiani, Bach and Marais will showcase the sophistication of Baroque, Sollima and Vasks will introduce us to the intensity and emotional depth of contemporary music.

The listeners will have an opportunity to hear the intimate sound of a contemporary-made Baroque-style cello built in 2024 by Philipp Bonhoeffer, a masterful maker whose workshop combines ancient craft secrets with modern scientific solutions. The other instrument, owned by Kristaps Bergs, was built in 1836 by Lorenzo Ventapane in Naples; the cello has a warm classical sound characteristic of a masterpiece by 19th-century makers, adapted to meet the demands of contemporary large-scale concert hall stages.

Later in the evening of the same day, at 19:00 on Saturday, 13 September 2025, the Grand Concert of the festival will feature appearances by the Lithuanian National Symphony Orchestra, Maestro Modestas Pitrėnas and solo musicians from Estonia and Lithuania. The programme was inspired by the 150th birth anniversary of the composer, writer and photographer Mikalojus Konstantinas Čiurlionis, an iconic Lithuanian cultural figure, marked in his native country and worldwide.

The concert will present a performance of Čiurlionis’ symphonic poem ‘In the Forest’, a powerful musical landscape where the forest serves a symbol for life force, the mystery and unfathomable might of nature. In a letter to his wife-to-be Sofija Kymantaitė, the composer wrote: ‘I would like to create a symphony from the murmur of waves, the rustling of centenary forest, the shimmering of the stars, our little songs and my unending longing.’

The centrepiece of the grand concert will be a performance of the Argentine composer Osvaldo Golijov’s concerto for accordion, cello and orchestra ‘Azul’ (‘Blue’), a musical conversation between Marcel Johannes Kits, one of the most promising Estonian cellists of the younger generation, the Latvian accordionist Artūrs Noviks and the Lithuanian National Symphony Orchestra.

One of the most accomplished cello concerti in the history of contemporary music, ‘Azul’ was commissioned and first performed by the Boston Symphony Orchestra in 2006 with the great Yo-Yo Ma playing the cello solo. The composer was inspired to write the piece after spending the summer in the Middle East in 2000, at a time that saw a new wave of violence engulf the region. Golijov says that he was ‘struck by this incredible planet that we live on and how beautiful it is from above and how in a way with the topographical view, you don’t get that sense of all the struggles of life on the surface of our planet,’ a very dominant feeling in today’s world.

The concert will be preceded by the opening of an art exhibition showing contemporary painting by Baltic artists at the Cēsis Concert Hall Art Gallery in association with the Rothko Museum.

On Sunday, 14 September 2025 at 13:00, don’t miss a special Cello Cēsis event for the young listeners, a visually magnificent and emotional concert production ‘Guardians of the Universe’ staged in association with the MELO M cello group and the director Kārlis Freimanis. Children and their parents are invited to dive head-first into a cosmic adventure and discover the healing power of mutual understanding and music.