EFA Monthly Digest November 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.
Over its forty years, Krakow's Sacrum Profanum Festival (6 – 11 November) has become steadily more contemporary in its programming. It does not only present modern works; it 'remixes' them into different genres. Whether all the composers would have been entirely happy to have their work so manipulated is open to question. It is, though, a distinctive strategy to attract listeners more attuned to rock and electronic sound than acoustic instruments. The concerts have titles like Ritual I – VI, Fragile Sensations, Truth, and The March of Independent Music. A flavour can be tasted from the description of the music in Truth. This is given (11 November) in the modernist main reading room of the Jagiellonian Library, co-produced by the Penderecki European Centre for Music, by the Polish Radio Choir. “By the time the concert starts, the skylight will have gone dark. The audience will take their seats at the original tables, lit by individual lamps, and the quiet reading area will be filled with voices, texts and meanings.”
As that finishes in Krakow, the Eufonie Festival Of Central and Eastern Europe begins in cities across Poland (12 November – 6 December). The aim is to concentrate on the music of the countries that constitute the political Visegrad Group of countries and extended to Ukraine, Romania and the Balkans. Most of the concerts involve Poland's major orchestras, including a string ensemble from Szczecin called the Baltic Neopolis Orchestra – not Necropolis, as I originally misread it. Neopolis was an ancient city a very long way from the Baltic, on the Thracian coast east of Thessalonika. In other words, Eufonie encompasses a lot of Europe.
Armenia holds its tribute festival to the country's most famous 20th century composer, Aram Khatchaturian from 26 November – 15 December. Yerevan, the capital, will be a lot chillier than when EFA held its summit there in 2023. The pianist Eva Gevorgyan is going to need a long sleep after the first two days because she plays all four Rachmaninov concertos plus the Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini (there's always a debate as to whether that or the second concerto has the best tune). The third concert (9 December) has Khatchaturian's Second Symphony and the superb viola player, Timothy Ridout, in the concerto by the Tajik composer, Tolib Shakhidi, who celebrates his 80th birthday this year. The Armenian State Symphony Orchestra plays all the concerts, conducted by the festival's founder, Sergey Smbatyan.