show category: Concert

Cluj Chamber Music Festival, now in its 4th edition, proposes a new perspective on chamber music — an open space where tradition and experimentation coexist. The programme moves across styles and eras, from Renaissance polyphony to jazz and crossover projects, bringing together international artists, established musicians, and emerging performers. Set within a network of unconventional venues — from churches to inner courtyards and alternative spaces — the festival creates connections and invites audiences to rediscover chamber music beyond conventional frameworks.

The concert Alessandro Scarlatti “alla Palestrina” offers an immersion into the world of sacred polyphony, in a setting that naturally enhances its meaning: the St. Michael’s Church. The programme highlights the music of Alessandro Scarlatti in stile antico, inspired by the Renaissance model of Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina — an encounter between two eras and two visions of the sacred in music.

The repertoire includes Missa Octogoniana and Salve Regina by Alessandro Scarlatti, alongside some of the most renowned motets by Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina. Rarely performed, this programme finds here its ideal context — both through the space itself and the excellence of its interpretation.

About the artists

The Italian vocal ensemble Odhecaton, conducted by Paolo Da Col, is one of the most acclaimed groups specializing in Renaissance and Baroque music. Winner of the Abbiati Prize (2018), the ensemble is distinguished by a unique interpretative approach, based on clarity of musical discourse and a direct relationship between music and text.

Bringing together some of Italy’s finest male voices, Odhecaton explores repertoires from the European musical space of the 15th to the 17th centuries and is regularly invited to major international stages and festivals. Its extensive discography, dedicated to composers such as Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina, Claudio Monteverdi, Carlo Gesualdo, and Josquin des Prez, has received numerous international awards, confirming the ensemble’s status as a benchmark in the interpretation of polyphony.

We invite you on Sunday, May 10, at 8:00 PM, to St. Michael’s Church for a concert in which music and space converge into an experience of contemplation, balance, and depth.

Cluj Chamber Music Festival – 4th edition – does not propose a formula. It proposes a state of mind.
A festival that does not tell you how to listen to chamber music, but invites you to rediscover it.