Matinees

The Auditorium is one of the best concert halls in Europe and offers a stage for four special matinees on Sundays in each Festival.

In 2025, you can once again expect an exciting and varied programme from different genres.

Tenor Juan Diego Flórez and pianist Cécile Restier will perform in the excellent acoustics of the auditorium. In this matinee, Juan Diego Flórez sings songs and arias by Rossini, Donizetti, Massenet and Verdi, not forgetting possible encores, in which the star tenor also likes to pick up the guitar himself: a celebration of the highest vocal art.

Take a legendary pianist and one of today's great violin virtuosos, and an extraordinary musical experience is guaranteed. Rudolf Buchbinder and Nikolaj Szeps-Znaider chose a wonderfully coordinated programme for their matinee on the opening weekend.

On 24 August 2025, Christina Pluhar and her ensemble L'Arpeggiata will be guests at the Grafenegg Festival. For her matinee, the Graz-born specialist for early music off the beaten track will bring her new programme ‘Wonder Women’. The programme combines traditional music from South America and Italy with works by Baroque composers such as Barbara Strozzi and Francesca Caccini and tells of extraordinary, strong, courageous and special women.

The fourth and final matinee is organised by Klaus Florian Vogt with Ensemble Acht. On the programme: Franz Schubert's cycle ‘Die schöne Müllerin’, in which the joys and sorrows of love of a miller's boy take centre stage. This time, however, the work will not be performed in its conventional version: Andreas N. Tarkmann has fanned out the piano part for chamber ensemble, allowing Schubert's illumination of the soul to shimmer in subtle instrumental colours. Ensemble Acht, which has been successful for years with Schubert's Octet, among other works, becomes Klaus Florian Vogt's sensitive music-making partner.