The Klavierfestival Ruhr, one of the world's leading events on piano music has announced their motto for the 2005 celebrations, which will take place June 17th until August 19th. The headline will be Transcriptions and Paraphrases and focus on how composers used existing material to shape something new (a sort of 19th century sampling, if you like) and recreate the feeling of e.g. a pompous operas merely on black and white keys. The festival is set to be a full success once again and went off to an incredible start with 10.000 tickets already sold and the opening dates with Lang Lang completely packed. Which indicates that even last years incredible number of 325.000 visitors might still be surpassed. By the way: there are still seats to be had for concerts by Daniel Barenboim, Martha Argerich, Alfred Brendel and others, so get moving! The festival is spread out over various cities of the populous Rhein/Ruhr region and uses not only concert halls, but also museums, schools, castles and monasteries.

Festival Homepage: Klavierfestival Ruhr