EFA Monthly Digest April 2026
Each month Simon Mundy highlights what is happening across the European Festivals Association (EFA)’s network, offering a glimpse of the many ways our community is active across Europe and beyond.
Peralada Easter Festival
2 – 5 April, Catalunya - Spain
Peralada, only a short way from the Spanish-French border and close to the town of Figueiras, is a small town with a fascinating castle and estates that have been in the hands of the Mateu family since 1910. These days it has a museum, first rate restaurants, a superb adjoining church for performances (with Salvador Dali's collection of Roman stone fragments in the cloisters) and two festivals each year. The summer festival in July mostly takes place in the extensive grounds and in front of the vineyard that produces some of the regions finest cava. The Easter Festival is held in the church and the performances are appropriately sacred.
Simon's programme tips: Les Arts Florissants with their founder William Christie performing Couperin's 1714 Lessons for Tenebrae (9pm Friday 3 April) and the next evening (6pm on Easter Saturday) the excellent Vox Luminis from Bruges/Brugge with Requiem music in German by early Baroque composers.
Bartók Spring International Arts Weeks
2 – 12 April, Budapest - Hungary
Despite its title the festival is not particularly concerned with the music of Bela Bartók (born 145 years ago). It includes opera, ballet, pop music, films and panel discussions as well as concerts. It is one of a series of events produced through the year by the MÜPA organisation and it brings in major productions from abroad as well as celebrating local artists.
Simon's programme tips: Vivaldi's 1735 opera Il Tamerlano could hardly be more topical given the current war across the Middle East, though I'm sure the producers were not being prophetic. Canadian-Iranian countertenor Cameron Shahbazi sings the role of the conquering tyrant, known in English as Tamberlaine. With the French ensemble Les Accents, led from the violin as Vivaldi himself would have done by Thibault Noally (7.30pm Thursday 2 April, Bartok National Concert Hall). For those in the music business, Classical:Next, the huge exchange fair, will be taking place during the festival from 8 – 14 April. Anybody attending will be witness to Hungary's parliamentary elections, likely to be crucial for the future of Europe.
Ankara Music Festival
4 – 30 April, Ankara - Türkiye
The Ankara Music Festival is celebrating its 40th anniversary. Organised by the private Sevda-Cenap And Music Foundation, it has brought imaginative performances to the country's capital city, which can otherwise seem a rather dry centre of government. This year the festival brings in orchestras that rarely gain an international profile: the Tbilisi Symphony Orchestra from Georgia, the Jakarta Concert Orchestra from Indonesia and the Tartastan Symphony Orchestra from Kazan in Russia. There are chamber concerts too.
Simon's programme picks: The concert commemorating the 400th anniversary of the death of the lutenist and composer John Dowland, given by the Trio Elogio (8pm 14 April in the Museum of Painting and Sculpture). And the closing concert by the Presidential Symphony Orchestra (8pm 30 April CSO Ada Ankara) with works picturing Spain in the first half and new pieces by two Turkish composers in the second.
Turkish State Theatres Festivals
28 March - 30 April, Türkiye
The theatre festival season in Turkey (or Türkiye, as its government has decided to rename it recently) is getting underway this month. The State Theatres hold Turkish and guest language drama festivals, each with its own programme and target audience, in many cities across the country throughout the year. It begins with the Sabancı Adana International Theatre Festival in Adana (28 March - 11 April), followed by the rather quaintly named but impressively wide-ranging Little Ladies and Little Gentlemen's International Theatre Festival in Ankara (24 – 30 April).
Ljubljana Festival, Slovenian Music Days
17 - 23 April, Ljubljana - Slovenia
Two anniversaries are celebrated in the Slovenian Music Days this month: the 40th anniversary of the festival itself, and the centenary of classical music broadcasting in Slovenia – a remarkably early date, given that radio stations throughout Europe were in their infancy in 1926. Organised by Ljubljana Festival, the Music Days opens in the country's second city, Maribor, with a concert dedicated to the experimental symphonic world of Janez Matičič, who died aged 95 in 2022. Several of the festival's events are free, especially those featuring and discussing the music of contemporary composers and radio history.
Simon's programme tips: The reconstruction of an early broadcast from of Slovenian art song, performed now by soprano Štefica Grasselli and pianist Irena Zajec in Teutonic Knights, hall of the the reconstructed monastery that holds the city's arts college, Krizanke (7.30pm 19 April). And the closing concert (Slovene Philharmonic Hall, 7.30pm 23 April), where Radio Slovenia Symphony Orchestra plays music by Paul Clift, Vikno Globokar and, playing his own Second Piano Concerto, Žiga Stanič.
Festival Música Viva
28 April - 3 May, Lisbon - Portugal
In Lisbon, the 32nd Festival Música Viva aims to cross language, generations and geography to explore the limits of sound, body, word and technology. There are some classics of modernist and minimalist music as well as plenty of pieces from recent years, performed in the Sao Luiz Municipal Theatre.
Simon's programme tips: the percussion ensemble of the Portuguese Chamber Orchestra playing Drumming, a seminal work by Steve Reich (Cintra Hall, 8pm 30 April) and the Braga Sinfonietta in the same hall (8pm 2 May) playing Ligeti's Ramifications and Takemitsu's Requiem for String Orchestra.
Festival Digitize Me!
18 March - 28 June, Antwerp - Belgium
There are two April performances in this festival organised by De Singel in Antwerp. A dance work promises that, 'performance artist Alexandra Bachzetsis has a nine-member ensemble wandering naked through reality and fantasy, and Samuel Baidoo gives you access to a series of safe havens you can visit through their avatar S. What is real?' (Theaterstudio, 8pm 3-4 April). A 'poetic game-performance on grief and healing' by Samuel Baidoo, in collaboration with, among others, new media artist Sondi (Expo, 8pm 3-4 April). In this performance, Baidoo presents a video game, and afterwards, you can visit the accompanying exhibition for several more weeks (Expo, 8 April-28 June).