Festival AFEKT 2025

AFEKT, Estonia’s largest contemporary music festival, will take place in 2025 for the twenty-fourth time. The 2025 edition commemorates 100 years of Luciano Berio and Pierre Boulez, additionally honouring Arvo Pärt and Helmut Lachenmann, who celebrate their 90^th birthdays this year.

While some festival programmes feature large-scale compositions, others focus on a single composer. This year’s festival theme, “Zwei Gefühle”, is inspired by Helmut Lachenmann’s work of the same name and reflects the contrasting yet resonant musical worlds of Arvo Pärt and Helmut Lachenmann,

Pianist Michael Wendeberg will perform Boulez’s solo piano works. Neue Vocalsolisten Stuttgart and the Estonian National Symphony Orchestra will perform Berio’s Sinfonia alongside new works by Estonian composers Jüri Reinvere and Madli Marje Gildemann.

The opening concert will feature Ensemble Musikfabrik performing The Fabrication of Light by Chaya Czernowin and Prozession by Enno Poppe. Estonian groups such as Ensemble U:, Cyberstudio, and Ludensemble will premiere works by Liisa Hirsch, Helena Tulve, and Sarah Nemtsov.

In addition to its exciting concerts, AFEKT 2025 will offer lectures, workshops, and lessons by visiting artists at the Estonian Academy of Music and Theatre. This year’s festival was made possible by the Ernst von Siemens Music Foundation.

Further Information:
festivalafekt.ee

Dates

October 24–28, 2025
Various locations, Tallinn