Where the greatest conductors give their farewell

Already since 1953, the mission of the Ljubljana Summer Festival, has been to provide visitors from both home and abroad with cultural and artistic events of the highest quality, performed by prestigious, internationally recognised artists. And really, since its inception, the festival has showcased a number of symphonic and chamber concerts, as well as opera, ballet and theatre performances featuring first-class foreign and domestic artists what gives to the festival an important, influential role in the cultural life of the region. In the past few years alone, the Ljubljana Festival has staged between 70 and 80 events of different genres, attracting some 80,000 domestic and foreign visitors. This illustrates just how successful and important the festival has become. One of the organisation’s mottos declares: “Our basic mission is to provide a good programme; cultural tourism should be its result.” This is how the Festival contributes to Ljubljana’s respected reputation as a compelling tourist destination and a city of festivals that offers cutting-edge artistic programmes.

Equally important is the Ljubljana Summer Festival for Ljubljana’s main cultural and congress centre, the Cankarjev dom, which every year hosts several of the most acclaimed festival’s performances. Any business or congress guest to Cankarjev dom can after meetings attend events of the most high-profile artistic events on the globe’s scale. Not rarely, visting the performance can mean the opportunity of the life time as it is very difficult to catch such acclaimed performances twice while they are traveling around the globe through the most recognized cultural centres of the world.

Next week, for example, Cankarjev dom is hosting famous Russian Mariinsky Orchestra with conductor Valery Gergiev and piano soloist Dmitry Shishkin. On the 28^th and 29^th of August, Cankarjev dom will be a venue of Verdi’s La Traviata performed by Teatro Regio Torino, one of the finest Italian Opera Houses, with conductor Donato Renzetti. On the 4^th of September, one of the China’s best orchestras, increasingly well known on the international circuit, having performed around the World and collaborated with artists of the caliber of José Carreras, the Shenzhen Symphony Orchestra with conductor Daye Lin and two fast-rising names in classical music – cellist Jiapeng Nice and violint Tianwa Yang  –, will take place inside Cankarjev dom’s magnificent Gallus Hall.

And as this year’s festival opening boasted a magnificent Opera Aida on Congress Square, it will also magnificently close with a classical gem and this time in Cankarjev dom. On the 5^th of September, the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra with conductor Zubin Mehta is coming to Gallus Hall. Israel Philharmonic Orchestra is unquestionably one of the finest orchestras anywhere in the world. It performs every year in concert halls and at major festivals around the world and works with the most important conductors and soloists. This gala concert that ends this year’s Ljubljana Summer Festival is particularly significant as it is part of the farewell tour of one of the greatest conductors of the modern age, Zubin Mehta, who is retiring after directing the orchestra for 50 years.

Breda Pečovnik, Msc, congress and commercial programme director and director general assistant at Cankarjev dom told for Kongres Magazine: “Cankarjev dom is immensely proud to be for almost 40 years one of the Ljubljana Summer Festival’s regular venues and to be the place where such world’s greatest names in opera, symphony, ballet and theatre perform for the Slovenian and regional audiences. In particular, Cankarjev dom is happy that such events prove how both of the teams, the cultural as well as the congress one, are succeeding in fulfilling the mission of intertwining both of the fields in one and the same heart in benefit of the wider public, and particularly in benefit of Slovenia’s and Ljubljana’s renome.”