The line-up has been announced for this year’s Tsinandali Festival.

Founded in 2019, The Tsinandali Festival has presented major international musicians in the historic Tsinandali Estate situated in the heart of Georgia’s wine country. Despite the challenges posed by the global pandemic, the Festival has been presented every September since its founding

Pianists featuring at this year’s edition include Seong-Jin Cho; Lucas Debargue, Mao Fujita, Denis Kozhukhin and Julien Quentin.

Returning again this year is the Pan-Caucasian Youth Orchestra, which brings together over 80 young musicians from across Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Turkey & Ukraine. Often coming from countries that have a long history of tensions and disputes, these musicians come together to rehearse and perform on the Tsinandali estate. Thanks to support from the Ministry of Culture, Sport and Youth of Georgia and the Swiss and Norwegian embassies in Georgia, the Pan-Caucasian Youth Orchestra returns to the Festival this year for the first time since the outbreak of the Covid pandemic.

The Orchestra is set to open the Festival on 2 September alongside pianist Mao Fujita. Their programmes includes Brahms’s First Piano Concerto and Beethoven’s Seventh Symphony. Seong-Jin Cho and conductor Charles Dutoit then join the Orchestra on 5 September for a performance of Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No 4 in G major Op 58, and Dvořák’s The Symphony No 9 in E minor, ‘From the New World’, Op 95.

Elsewhere, Mao Fujita plays a selection of Mozart, Schubert, Brahms and the Schumanns (3 Sept), Denis Kozhukhin teams up with violinist Alexandra Conunova (7 Sept) and Julien Quentin takes to the stage with cellist Kian Soltani (9 Sept). The full line-up can be found here.

Festival founders Martin Engstroem and Avi Shoshani comment, “We are delighted that the Tsinandali Festival continues its unbroken run of annual editions and to bring back the Pan-Caucasian Youth Orchestra. As the region faces the Russian invasion and occupation of neighbouring Ukraine, this Orchestra is needed more than ever.

By bringing together these young musicians from across the region, the Orchestra fosters understanding and dialogue – and perhaps most importantly of all the ability to listen to others and perform as a cohesive cohort. We remain indebted to George Ramishvili and the team at Tsinandali who have never swerved from their commitment to the Festival and its ideals.”