The Maribor Festival is one of Europe's finest summer festivals. Rating:****
John Allison, The Sunday Telegraph (UK), 2010
Maribor is not a city with which you would normally associate classical music of the highest quality – that accolade is normally reserved for illustrious places such as Berlin, Vienna, London or New York. But for a few days in early September, Maribor was indeed a city of excellence in all ways imaginable.
Gerald Fenech, Music & Vision, 2010
Thanks to the increasing international reputation of the artistic director Richard Tognetti, the Maribor Festival is becoming an increasingly recognizable cultural event in this part of Europe.
Bosiljka Perić Kempf, Novi List (CRO), 2010
Festival Maribor – a celebration of art and beauty in a warm and friendly city of great beauty, brilliant cuisine, and fine local wines: a feast for the senses!
Peter Beveridge, Classical Destinations
… the artistic director Richard Tognetti exerted his style: the unrestrained drive, virtuosity, creative imagination, feeling for the right moment, stage talent, charisma… Add the richness of the orchestral sound – what more could a person ask for?
Janko Šetinc, Večer (SI) 2011
One of the most interesting music events in this part of Europe – the Maribor Festival.
Joško Tomasović, tportal.hr (CRO) 2011
The performance of Stravinsky was so fantastically mastered that we were overwhelmed by a chilling breeze of perfection.
Janko Šetinc, Večer (SI) 2011
Even at first glance it [the Festival Maribor] already discloses the diversity so typical of Tognetti and, even more noticeable than in the recent years, the wish for a meaningful combination of compositions – a really the unorthodox courage concerning the program… The so-called main Slovene orchestras (the Radio Orchestra and the Slovene Philharmonics) which are – in contrast to the Festival Maribor Orchestra – permanent can only dream of a comparable intensity or zeal.
Jure Dobovišek, Delo (SI) 2011
In the most sensational concert of the spectacular Maribor Music Festival week, Giovanni Sollima issued a challenge to all who think the cello is for the faint of heart… this was music that lifted the cello into the realms of the musical gods. It didn't hurt that the cello people were partnered to breathtaking precision and intensity by the Festival Maribor strings and its miracle-working conductor, Marko Letonja.
Laurence Vittes, Seen and Heard International, 2011
