This year, from the 21st of September to the 15th of October, the 17th Banchetto Musicale international festival of early music will take place in Vilnius. As every year, the festival will present both popular compositions from the medieval, Renaissance and Baroque periods and works that have never been performed in Lithuania before.

The opening event of the festival is scheduled to take place on 16 September at the Europa fashion and style centre (Konstitucijos pr. 7a). The event will comprise opening of an exhibition of reproductions of early manuscripts, courtesy of the Library of the Academy of Science of Lithuania, and a press conference. The exhibition, entitled Music and Silence, presenting the epoch of illumination, will be on display at the Europa fashion and style centre throughout the festival.

Many celebrated performers from France, Italy, Germany, Spain and the Baltic states will appear in this year’s festival. At Vilnius’ concert halls and theatres, concerts will be given by the flute virtuoso Dorothee Oberlingen from Germany and one of the most popular ensembles of medieval singing , the Ensemble Organum. The audience will be treated to a dramatised performance by Accordone, a group specialising in traditional Italian music.

One of the highlights of the festival is the closing concert, which will feature the Brevis Choir and Consort performing one of the most magnificent masterpieces of the early Baroque, Claudio Monteverdi’s Vespers della Beata Vergine.

The festival events will be complemented by a masterclasses dedicated to the 250th anniversary of the birth of Mozart. For four days at the Lithuanian Academy of Music and Theatre, the pianist and harpsichord player Alexander Puliaev from Germany will be sharing his expertise in music by Mozart and his contemporaries.

The festival is organized by the Public Institution Banchetto Musicale.