Take Five!: Schütz, Handel, Scarlatti, Bach, Berezovsky
November 10-21, 2025 | National Philharmonic of Ukraine
Twelve days of baroque discoveries, dialogues, and premieres in the heart of Kyiv
From November 10 to 21, 2025, the second edition of Kyiv Baroque Fest–2025 will take place—an international festival that reveals new facets of early music every year, thanks to the partnership between the National Philharmonic of Ukraine, Open Opera Ukraine and the National House of Music. The event brings together Ukrainian and European famous performers, researchers, students, and music lovers around the common space of Baroque music—its living presence and inspiration.
Baroque is not like an old-fashioned museum. Baroque is a relevant global and cultural trend. In Europe and the U.S., the number of festivals and listeners is growing, especially among young people, and Baroque music projects are becoming media events with high public resonance. As noted by the Total Baroque portal, early music, including Baroque, has emerged from the niche it occupied in the 1980s: today it is performed in the philharmonic halls of Paris and Berlin, at festivals in Vienna, Edinburgh, Glasgow, Utrecht, Chicago, on large stages and in chamber halls around the world.
Kyiv Baroque Fest was first held in 2023 in the format of the French overture “Rameau/Bortniansky: Gallant Europe” and already then launched the concept of combining Ukrainian and European music and the multiplicity of cultural identities. After the success of the first edition in 2024, which received widespread public and media attention and sold out, Kyiv Baroque Fest established itself as an important event in Kyiv’s cultural calendar and as one of the most promising early music festivals in Eastern Europe.
One of the key ideas behind Kyiv Baroque Fest is to strengthen and highlight the connections between Ukraine and other European and world cultures, which will contribute to the emergence of unexpected perspectives and themes in the proposed concert programs, the participation of musicians from different parts of the world in the festival, joint educational and outreach initiatives, and the testing of new festival formats.
This year’s festival theme, named after one of the most popular jazz standards, – Take Five!,– invites us to open up the space of early music and make it available for experimentation and unexpected stylistic combinations. At the same time, it is a reminder of five composers whose influence is still felt in various parts of Europe and the world: Heinrich Schütz, Georg Friedrich Handel, Domenico Scarlatti, Johann Sebastian Bach, and Maksym Berezovsky. Each of them is an important figure in the history of European Baroque. Together, they form a map of connections, intersections, and inspirations stretching from Dresden to Naples, from London to Kyiv.
The festival will feature world-renowned artists of Baroque music: Andreas Scholl, countertenor | Germany; Festina Lente Ensemble | Italy; Josué Meléndez Peláez, cornetto | Switzerland-Mexico; Hana Blažíková, soprano | Czech Republic; Marek Toporowski, harpsichord/organ | Poland; Jan de Winne, Flûte traversière | Belgium, Salomé Gasselin, viola da gamba | France and many others.
Educational, cultural, and socially responsible context
Kyiv Baroque Fest combines music, literature, philosophy, cinema, theater, theology, history of reading, and fashion. The festival is creating a space where the past is part of the future.
The idea behind the festival is to reveal the Baroque not as a museum era, but as a living territory of freedom, open dialogue with the present.
This year, Kyiv Baroque Fest is collaborating for the first time with the Ukrainian inclusive clothing brand FREEki, which shares its philosophy of combining creativity, ethics, and social responsibility: “We are FREEki, a Ukrainian clothing brand born out of the freedom to be ourselves. FREEki is a brand with a social stance. Our team includes young people with complex developmental disabilities. We are all different, and that is our strength. We dream that the employment of people with disabilities will become the norm, not the exception. While society is moving towards inclusion, we are already showing that it is possible. It is not always easy, but it is always genuine and always meaningful. This time, we joined the beauty of music by creating merchandise designs for Kyiv Baroque Fest 2025. For us, baroque is harmony and passion, form and freedom. We tried to convey music through fabric, texture, and details. FREEki is when clothes make a sound.“
Take Five! – is an invitation to listen to five voices that have been connect
