This year's festival composer is Valentin Silvestrov, born 30 September 1937 in Kyiv.
Valentin Silvestrov is Ukraine's foremost living composer and has been an important voice in European musical life for over 60 years. He fled Kyiv shortly after Russia went to war against Ukraine last year and now lives in exile in Berlin.
His beautiful, quiet, and meditative music is popular worldwide, and the little piece Postlude no. 3 has been played over 11 million times on Spotify!
Since 1999 the festival has yearly presented a living composer. Our goal is to play as broad a spectre of the composer’s music as possible throughout the week and at the same time include and inspire the local music life. We believe that the barrier to new music is reduced when you meet a living composer who also can explain his or her own work. We are very proud to have had the following composers at the festival:
James MacMillan (1999)
Jon Balke (2001) (also commissioned work)
Luciano Berio (2002)
Steve Reich (2003)
Sofia Gubaidulina (2004) (also commissioned work)
Thomas Adès (2005)
Magnus Lindberg (2006)
George Crumb (2007)
Rolf Wallin (2008)
Osvaldo Golijov (2009)
HK Gruber (2010)
Brett Dean (2011)
Sir Peter Maxwell Davies (2012)
Lera Auerbach (2013)
Kaija Saariaho (2014)
Maja Solveig Kjelstrup Ratkje (2015)
Bent Sørensen (2016)
Sally Beamish (2017)
Michel van der Aa (2018)
Jon Balke (2001) (also commissioned work)
Luciano Berio (2002)
Steve Reich (2003)
Sofia Gubaidulina (2004) (also commissioned work)
Thomas Adès (2005)
Magnus Lindberg (2006)
George Crumb (2007)
Rolf Wallin (2008)
Osvaldo Golijov (2009)
HK Gruber (2010)
Brett Dean (2011)
Sir Peter Maxwell Davies (2012)
Lera Auerbach (2013)
Kaija Saariaho (2014)
Maja Solveig Kjelstrup Ratkje (2015)
Bent Sørensen (2016)
Sally Beamish (2017)
Michel van der Aa (2018)
Lasse Thoresen (2019)
Mark Simpson (2020)
Caroline Shaw (2021)
Olga Neuwirth (2022)
Foto: Lili Viter