Gdańsk Music Festival is by design devoted to classical music with a possibility to widen the program with other music genres or even arts which may contribute to its popularization.
Through the expression "classical music" one should understand as well early music as contemporary music for which romanticism and XX th century modernism compositions have been a counterpoint. Through the expression "other genres of music and art" one should understand jazz, popular music, multimedia arts, which combined with classical music, bring it closer to the audience least oriented in this matter.
Gdańsk Music Festival differentiates from the other music festivals with the diversity of music specializations. The artists selection criteria was on one hand to choose the worldwide famous stars and on the other to promote young artists.
In Gdańsk over the centuries had worked many composers whose names were persistently subscribed to the worlds culture heritage. Paweł Siefert, Francisco de Rivulo, Andrzej Hakenberger, Jan Walenty Meder, Freislich family - are just a few examples from the captivating history of the city by the Motława River and in the same they are one of many proofs of the city´s multiculturality. In Gdańsk for the centuries were meeting and still are meeting various styles, tendencies, directions which create a kind of a platform for exchanging thoughts and beliefs, not only concerning music and broadly understood culture. Gdańsk is a place of birth of many social movements including the most important one for contemporary Europe - Solidarność.
Gdańsk in the former times was also a place, for living in which, strived many prominent artists and the posts of a Chapel Master of the City Council Chapel or the Chapel of Saint Marien Church belonged to the most desirable in Europe.
Contemporary Gdańsk has then again an enormous creative potential of people and societies binded with the city and working on its ground. The festival is by design a platform of cooperation between the most important institutions which are often competing with each other on a regular basis. Gdańsk is the abode of situated in a beautiful object Polish Baltic F. Chopin Philharmonic in Gdańsk.
Gdańsk is also the residence of The Academy of Music, in which for 60 years were inter alia organized: Piano Department created by professor Zbigniew Śliwiński, String Instrument Department that continues the traditions of a legendary class of professor Stefan Herman, Vocal and Acting Department carries on equally legendary achievements of professor Barbara Iglikowska or Organ Unit whose students are the winners of the most prestigious organ competitions in Europe.
Last but not least Gdańsk is a place in which, as in the former centuries work and create great composers like Eugeniusz Głowski, Krzysztof Olczak, or among younger Agnieszka Stuldzińska and Radosław Łuczkowski.
This year edition of Gdańsk Music Festival is devoted to the memory of two outstanding pedagogues: professor Zbigniew Śliwiński and professor Stefan Herman. The program is therefore dominated with such prominent individuals as pianists: Idil Biret, Nikolai Demidenko or Dimitri Gordin and violinists - the most celebrated pupil of professor Herman - Konstanty Andrzej Kulka and the first Pole who have won International N. Paganini Competition in Genova - Mariusz Patyra.