Festival Sonora 709_Classic

The 2026 edition of the Sonora festival will take place in Merano between 12 March and 8 April, with five events. The theme of this year's edition is “Classical”.

Classic is understood as an attribute given to works of art that continue to speak to our present regardless of the era and place in which they were produced. In this sense, in keeping with the character of the event, the theme will be explored from multiple perspectives.

The first concert, in conjunction with the exhibition by Cuban artist René Francisco curated by Merano Arte, features Gaston Joya, an internationally active double bass player and fellow countryman of the artist featured in the exhibition, and two exponents of international jazz, clarinettist Gabriele Mirabassi and guitarist Roberto Taufic, both passionate connoisseurs of Latin American musical languages. This is a new line-up created for the festival to explore the profound themes of Cuban and Caribbean musical tradition.

The festival continues on 18 March with a concert by the Conductus Ensemble, which traces a path from Bach to an Italian premiere by composer Vanni Moretto, including Mozart's famous “Jeunehomme” concerto for piano and orchestra, performed by the young and accomplished Luca Buratto under the baton of Marcello Fera.

A classic squared is undoubtedly Bach's Goldberg Variations, which will be presented on 23 March in a charming version for string trio performed by Federica Ragnini on cello, Ernest Braucher on viola and Marcello Fera on violin.

After Conductus' extraordinary success with Mozart's Don Giovanni, the opera returns to the Teatro Puccini with “Maxima immoralia”, a work by composer Orazio Sciortino that debuted in the summer of 2025 to great acclaim at the Fondazione Cantiere d'arte in Montepulciano. Here, the classic is largely based on literary sources from which the composer, who also wrote the libretto, drew inspiration to reflect on the link between popular culture and eroticism.

The festival concludes on 8 April with “Scandinavian Spirits”, the extraordinary work by composer and violist Krishna Nagaraja, which stages an enchanted narrative between the real and the otherworldly, drawn from ancient Scandinavian literary and musical sources.