Programme 2026
29 - 31 JULY • CRETE SENESI
29 July
20:00
Chiesa San Francesco, Asciano
Für Kenner & Liebhaber
Kristian Bezuidenhout, fortepiano
Kristian Bezuidenhout is one of the most acclaimed fortepianists of his generation, with landmark Mozart recordings on Harmonia Mundi and Principal Guest Director roles with the Freiburger Barockorchester and English Concert.
He opens the festival with a programme that traces the music these composers wrote when they were at their most personal: C.P.E. Bach's restless Rondo, Haydn's two great minor-key sonatas, and Mozart's Sonata in C minor K. 457. Played on the instrument they were written for.
TICKETS: €50
✧ Fine dinner follows the performance. Reservation required.
30 July
11:00
Chiesa San Francesco, Asciano
Love - Sacred & Profane
Guy Cutting (tenor), George Ireland (piano)
Guy Cutting is certainly one of today's most sought-after Bach interpreters, recently lauded for his Evangelist in Bach's St Matthew Passion with Collegium Vocale Gent.
With pianist George Ireland, he turns to the English song tradition: an hour of Finzi, Britten, Vaughan Williams and Howells exploring love in every register. Tender, wry, aching. At its centre, Britten's Canticle I, where the line between human and divine love dissolves.
TICKETS: €35
30 July
20:00
Chiesa San Francesco, Asciano
String Creatures
Fabrik Quartet (string quartet)
The Fabrik Quartet formed in Frankfurt in 2021 out of an intensive study of the same Xenakis quartet they bring to Asciano. First prize at the Anton Rubinstein International Chamber Music Competition, coached by Rebecca Saunders, Helmut Lachenmann and Liza Lim, the quartet has built its work on direct collaboration with the composers shaping contemporary music today. Lim's String Creatures breathes and transforms. Parra's Aracne spins intricate textures.
Xenakis's Tetras builds toward an architectural mass of sound.
TICKETS: €50
31 July
11:00
Chiesa San Francesco, Asciano
Between Lyricism and Modernity
Charlotte Spruit (violin), Angus Webster (piano)
Dutch violinist Charlotte Spruit, a YCAT artist and First Prize winner at the Leipzig International Bach Competition, joins conductor and pianist Angus Webster for a programme that crosses three sensibilities. Poulenc's wartime sonata, written in occupied Paris, sits between Sibelius's intimate Five Pieces Op. 81 and Fauré's youthful First Sonata, a touchstone of French Romanticism. Three composers writing at the edge of where lyricism turns into something stranger.
TICKETS: €35
31 July
20:00
Monastero di Sant’Anna in Camprena
Orlandus Lassus – Lagrime di San Pietro
Collegium Vocale Gent, Philippe Herreweghe
Orlando Lassus completed Lagrime di San Pietro three weeks before his death: twenty madrigals and a closing motet for seven voices, set to Tansillo's poetry on Peter's denial and repentance. Widely considered his spiritual testament, the cycle is one of the towering achievements of late Renaissance polyphony.
Philippe Herreweghe and Collegium Vocale Gent have lived with this music for decades, and bring it to the former monastery of Sant'Anna in Camprena to close the festival. After dark, beneath the olive groves of a sacred venue, the work and the place answer each other.
TICKETS: €50
✧ Fine dinner follows the performance. Reservation required.