Warsaw Autumn Festival 2025 – Premieres of Compositions with a Message

On 19 September 2025, the 68th edition of the Warsaw Autumn Festival will begin under the slogan “Prześwit” (Clearing). The programme includes three works commissioned by the Adam Mickiewicz Institute specifically for the festival – compositions by Marta Śniady, Lidia Zielińska, and Nina Fukuoka. Each of these works offers a unique perspective, combining music with literature, sound ecology, and horror aesthetics. The premieres will be performed by leading contemporary music ensembles: London Sinfonietta, Nordic Affect, and Nadar Ensemble.

“Prześwit” (Clearing) – the Theme of the 68th Warsaw Autumn

The 68th edition of the Warsaw Autumn is held under the slogan “Prześwit” (Clearing). It symbolises a new stage – an opening and an opportunity – both from a social and an individual perspective. In shaping the festival programme, which highlights the cautionary role of art, the curators have brought together works that address experiences of collective and individual trauma, as well as musical pieces that restore balance, provide compensation, and offer psychological regeneration to listeners, opening them to the light of a “clearing” and to intriguing sounds arriving from afar.

This year’s edition also marks the centenary of the creation in 1925 of the first representation of Polish composers, which laid the foundations for the establishment of the Polish Composers’ Union – the institution that initiated the Warsaw Autumn. The 68th edition will present a rich variety of new works. The main programme and the accompanying Warsaw Autumn Hits the Club will feature 60 works in total, including 58 premieres and world premieres, as well as 14 festival commissions, composed by 56 artists from 23 countries.

New Music for New Times: Three Commissions from the Adam Mickiewicz Institute

The concerts programmed and works presented in Warsaw in 2025 resonate across the continent. They are also featured in the programmes of prestigious festivals, including deciBels (Tallinn), Festival 20·21 (Leuven), New Music Dublin, Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival, Ultima Oslo Contemporary Music Festival, Gaudeamus (Utrecht), Wien Modern, Donaueschinger Musiktage, and Osterfestival Tirol. As a partner of the festival, the Adam Mickiewicz Institute is delighted to present three new commissions, created especially for this year’s edition of the Warsaw Autumn.

How Can I Help You? – Marta Śniady and the Emotional Map of Generations

On Saturday, 20 September 2025, at 7:30 p.m., during the concert LONDON SINFONIETTA / PATERSON / BURKE / GREEN at the Chopin University of Music Hall, the premiere of Marta Śniady’s How Can I Help You? will take place. The composition was inspired by a passage from Joanna Flis’s 2023 book Co ze mną nie tak? O życiu w dysfunkcyjnym domu, środowisku, w Polsce i o tym, jak sobie z tym (nie) radzimy [What’s Wrong with Me? About Life in a Dysfunctional Home, Environment, in Poland, and How We (Don’t) Cope with It]: “When we return to those times, we will see children writing in each other’s diaries a poem that still resonates like a mantra in the ears of many of us today: «Laugh among people, cry only in secret. Be light in dance, but never in life».” Śniady’s work will be performed by the London Sinfonietta, one of the world’s leading contemporary music ensembles.

Date and venue: Saturday, 20 September 2025, 7:30 p.m. – Chopin University of Music

Performers:

• London Sinfonietta

• Andrew Burke – Chief Executive and Artistic Director

• Geoffrey Paterson – Conductor

• Jonathan Green – Sound Projection

• Maciej Zadroga – Assistant Sound Director

• Marta Śniady – Electronics in How Can I Help You?
   

Programme:

• Laurence Osborn – Mute (part III)

• Hannah Kendall – Even sweetness can scratch the throat

• Marta Śniady – How Can I Help You?

• Laurence Osborn – Mute (część IV)

• Paweł Malinowski – floating:disappearance (ver. b for sinfonietta)

• Philip Venables – Illusions

Yuggoth by Nina Fukuoka – Horror in the World of Sound and Image

A day later, on Sunday, 21 September 2025, at 10:30 p.m., Nowa Miodowa (Concert Hall of the State Music School No. 1 in Warsaw) will host a concert by BOGNÁR / OLENCKI / NADAR ENSEMBLE, immersing listeners in the world of horror. The programme will feature exclusively the latest compositions, with a highlight being the presentation of Yuggoth by Polish-Japanese composer Nina Fukuoka, part of her larger Horror Project. The work was inspired by survival games, horror films, and the question of why contemporary music is so often associated with horror aesthetics. In the performance, the musicians and their instruments – together with their doppelgängers on screen – transform into puppets constructing a Frankenstein-like piece. The interplay of sound and image generates a disjointed mosaic of looped gestures.

Date and venue: Sunday, 21 September 2025, 10:30 p.m. – Nowa Miodowa, Concert Hall of the State Music School No. 1 in Warsaw
 

Performers:

NADAR ENSEMBLE comprising:

• Marieke Berendsen – Violin

• Nico Couck – Electric Guitar

• Yves Goemaere – Percussion

• Elisa Medinilla – Piano

• Pieter Matthynssens – Artistic Director, Cello

• Thomas Moore – Trombone

• Bertel Schollaert – Saxophone

• Dries Tack – Clarinet

• Wannes Gonnissen – Sound Projection

• Stefan Prins – Artistic Director

• Izumi Yoshida – Special Effects in the video for Yuggoth

Programme:

• Kuba Krzewiński – Interwencja #2

• Matthew Grouse – To put words in my mouth

• Eveline Vervliet – The silence that sounds in its absence

• Nina Fukuoka – Yuggoth

• Paul Scully – Personal Best

Lidia Zielińska’s Cryptobiosis – Between Biology and Sound

Cryptobiosis, as defined by Lidia Zielińska, is a reversible, temporary state of extreme reduction in the composer’s life activity, arising in response to unfavourable environmental conditions. The concert, taking place on Monday, 22 September 2025, at 10:30 p.m. at the State Ethnographic Museum in Warsaw, will present a form of dark sound ecology – a mystery of acoustic drones and texts resonating through space. It will be performed by Nordic Affect, one of the most distinctive ensembles on the Icelandic contemporary music scene.

Date and venue: Monday, 22 September 2025, 10:30 p.m. – State Ethnographic Museum in Warsaw

Performers:

NORDIC AFFECT, comprising:

• Halla Steinunn Stefánsdóttir – Violin

• Marie Stockmarr Becker – Viola

• Hanna Loftsdóttir – Cello

• Guðrún Óskarsdóttir – Harpsichord

• Katarzyna Figat – Sound Projection

Programme:

• Mirjam Tally – *Warm life at the foot of the iceberg*

• Halla Steinunn Stefánsdóttir – H e (a) r I

• Anna Thorvaldsdottir – Shades of Silence

• Halla Steinunn Stefánsdóttir – H e (a) r III

• Bergrún Snæbjörnsdóttir – Strange Turn / Narwhal

• Lidia Zielińska – Kryptobioza

• Halla Steinunn Stefánsdóttir – H e (a) r IV

• Bára Gísladóttir – Split thee, Soul, to Splendid Bits (attn.: no eternal life/light this time around)

More information about the festival events and tickets is available at warszawska-jesien.art.pl.