‘There is a particular scene in John Milton’s poem Paradise Lost,’ says International Festival Wratislavia Cantans Artistic Director Andrzej Kosendiak as he explains its enigmatically-punctuated 2025 theme, Paradise Lost [?], ‘in which Lucifer, cast down to hell, wakes up in a sea of fire to find that he is still himself, and utters the significant words: “The mind is its own place, and in itself can make a Heaven of Hell, a Hell of Heaven”’. Kosendiak continues, ‘I think this is the key tounderstanding the message of this year’s festival: humans themselves very often bring hell to earth, but it also happens that humans can reveal their greatness and build a paradise here’.

With an explanation such as that, it perhaps goes without saying that the 60^th edition of this major Polish festival is offering a feast of food for thought. Just as mention-worthy, meanwhile, is how neatly Kosendiak’s words also act as the key to understanding the festival’s longstanding overall musical and philosophical DNA. Namely, its dual passion for the importance of text, and for music’s power to act as a unifying force.

Based in the historic city of Wrocław and its surrounding area, Wratislavia Cantans was established in 1965 by composer Andrzej Markowski as an oratorio-cantata festival – a remarkable repertoire focus for an era during which Poland, still firmly behind the Iron Curtain, was ruled by authorities who neither encouraged religious activities, nor the presence of religious music in the official repertoire of artistic institutions. Equally remarkable for this time was the festival’s remit to imbed itself in the urban fabric by staging its performances in churches, because Poland also had no tradition of organising musical events outside of concert halls. Yet despite – or because of? – all this context, the festival welcomed international artists almost from the very beginning; which in the further context of the lack of accessible recorded music, meant that it acted very much as Poland’s window onto the world during these years. 

The NFM in Wrocław (credit: Lukasz Rajchert)

Back to 2025, and Wratislavia Cantans’s 60^th edition is still making good use of the many historic buildings at its disposal. One highlight will be baroque violinist Théotime Langlois de Swarte and lutenist Thomas Dunford performing in the intimate setting of the Pan Tadeusz Museum, which occupies one of the most beautiful tenement buildings on Wrocław’s Market Square. The festival’s original main venue, the Cathedral of Mary Magdalene, also features as usual. What has changed, venues-wise, since 1965, is that for those concerts that would sound best in a purpose-build acoustic, the festival has since 2015 also boasted, on Wolności Square in the city centre, one of the best concert halls in its part of Europe: the Witold Lutosławski National Forum for Music. Bricks and stone-wise, this consists of a 1,800-seat Main Hall, plus three chamber halls and an exhibition space. Institutionally meanwhile, it’s the result of the 2014 merger between Wratislavia Cantans and the 1945-founded Wrocław Philharmonic, which as the NFM Wrocław Philharmonic underpins the current festival programming, together with the more recently-created ensembles, the NFM Choir, Wrocław Baroque Orchestra, Wrocław Baroque Ensemble, NFM Boys’ Choir and NFM Girls’ Choir. 

The latter ensembles were founded by Andrzej Kosendiak while director of the NFM, the festival and the orchestra (2005-2024). Having recently stepped across to become instead the festival’s artistic director, he’s now quick to cite among this year’s highlights the opening concert led by his predecessor in the role, fellow conductor Giovanni Antonini, who with his own Baroque band Il Giardino Armonico will be performing Beethoven’s Symphony No 3 “Eroica” and, with the NFM choir under its artistic director Lionel Sow, Mozart’s “Coronation” Mass in C Major. ‘You could say that these are musical paradises’ he muses. ‘Absolute perfection is revealed in every bar of both works. But history also shows that the hopes Beethoven had for Napoleon ended with the transformation of an anticipated hero into a tyrant. So on the one hand, musical perfection, and on the other, imperfect reality.’

The NFM Choir (credit: Lukasz Rajchert)

The NFM Choir gets to sing Beethoven later in the festival, in the shape of his sparkling Choral Fantasy, alongside two hotly anticipated star visitors, Martha Argerich as its piano soloist, and Charles Dutoit conducting the Orchestre Philharmonique de Monte-Carlo. 

Kosendiak himself meanwhile conducts Wrocław Baroque Ensemble in his own orchestration of another work he views as a musical paradise, JS Bach’s The Art of Fugue. Other Polish artists include singer and musicologist Agnieszka Budzińska-Bennet making her festival debut with her ensemble Peligrina, performing one of several settings of Song of Songs.

Ever with its eye to the future, the festival also introduces a brand new competition for younger-generation ensembles, asking them to propose a programme related to main theme, and then awarding concerts to two winning ensembles. Aspiring singers meanwhile can attend the oratorio course, led as usual by Lionel Sow. The orchestras conference is back for a second year too, with representatives invited from orchestras from all around the world to discuss the future of music ensembles. 

Conductor Andrzej Kosendiak (credit: Łukasz Rajchert)

Importantly, the festival also continues its fervent championing of contemporary music via the world premiere of a brand new festival-commissioned Requiem by Zygmunt Krauze, dedicated to the child victims of war, and setting realist poetic texts rather than being strictly liturgical. Indeed conflict has been a very conscious element of the Paradise Lost [?] thinking, as war continues to rage on Poland’s eastern border, and the final emotive reference to it will be the festival-closing performance of Wagner’s Parsifal starring the NFM Wrocław Philharmonic under its conductor Christoph Eschenbach, who was born in Wrocław in 1940 when it was still Breslau, and whose father died in action during the Second World War. ‘Christoph Eschenbach’s arrival in Wrocław was also a return from hell,’ points out Kosendiak. ‘Parsifal was a very meaningful conclusion to this year’s Wratislavia Cantans, and it was his concept.’

The final element across the festival’s ten packed days is actual philosophical conversation centred on the main theme. ‘There is a hunger for a sense of community within us,’ reasons Kosendiak, ‘but we often jump at each other’s throats. Social engineers use every pretext to divide people according to the Roman maxim, because then they are easier to rule. But we need a common bond, and I think that music has an extremely important role to play here. I would like the NFM to be a place where you can meet and talk before and after a concert, and not only about it.’

So, Paradise Lost, or not? One suspects that at Wratislavia Cantans this September, the answer is in that enigmatic question mark.

For more information, visit www.nfm.wroclaw.pl