3rd edition
The third Festival, held from 3 to 11 September 2004, saw the emergence of three programme blocks, a concept that would be repeated in subsequent editions: the main programme, or a collection of major events, presenting the most interesting artistic developments, including projects commissioned and co-produced by the Festival; Łódź Festival! – a presentation of all Łódź communities that identify themselves with the idea of the Festival and show the city as a creative melting pot; and a series of collateral events, or the Festival’s periphery, open to phenomena on the fringe of art.
The third edition was a special one due to its coincidence with the 60th anniversary of the liquidation of the Łódź ghetto. It included Krzysztof Warlikowski’s production of The Dybbuk, based on the play by Szymon Ansky and a short story by Hanna Krall. There was also a recital of the great Israeli actress Orna Porat, who played a part in the performance.
The centrepiece of the Festival was a concert dedicated to the work of Giya Kancheli that took place in St. Matthew’s Evangelical Church. Since 1995, the Georgian composer has lived in Antwerp, where he is composer-in-residence for the Royal Flemish Philharmonic Orchestra. In Łódź, Life without Christmas, one of his compositions from the first half of the 1990s, was performed by the AUKSO Chamber Orchestra conducted by Marek Moś. The organizers of the Festival and the musicians dedicated the concert to the memory of the victims of the terrorist attack in Beslan.
Another unquestionable attraction was a special project by the Łódź Kaliska group, celebrating its 25th anniversary. The starting point for the project was the famous 1956 work by the Pop Art precursor Richard Hamilton, Just What Is It that Makes Today's Homes So Different, So Appealing? The Festival also featured a survey of the films of the great masters of cinema: Wojciech Has, Andrei Tarkovsky, Volker Schlöndorff and Roman Polański.
In fact, the third edition of the Festival began as early as October 2003 with concerts by the Waldorfer Kantorei conducted by Christopher Schonherr from Germany, Baruch Finkelstein, the Choir of the Don Cossacks, as well as the Orchestra and Choir of the Łódź Philharmonic and the Mixed Choir under the direction of Krzysztof Penderecki. It was the realization of the organizers’ idea that the Festival should last all year.
Festival poster
