The Ascona Music Festival was created under the auspices of an inspiration that merges at least three elements. The determinant factor is the beauty of Ascona, exciting and austere at the same time, inserted within a flourishing nature setting between the mountains and Lake Maggiore. It is an ideal atmosphere, which is combined with the musical experience of the renowned pianist Daniel Levy, who will participate as an interpreter and as the Artistic Director of the festival. Last but not least is 2010, the year of the bicentennial celebration of the birth of Fryderyk Chopin and Robert Schumann, to whom this first edition of the festival is dedicated.

As an annual event, the Festival – which will take place in two parts during Spring and Autumn - aims to highlight the chamber music repertoire and the excellent manner it serves music. Besides the concerts, offered as an aesthetic and elevating experience, there are master-classes for young musicians, seminars and CD presentations.

For its first edition we have selected musicians of an outstanding artistic calibre, including the Italian-Polish cellist Franco Maggio Ormezowski, and the Zurich String Quartet, with a chamber music repertoire of refined sensibility. The programme consists of three concerts to be held in the Church of the Collegio Papio during May and June 2010.

The Ascona Music Festival is promoted by the International Academy of Euphony, an organisation which is currently developing an intensive worldwide programme of educational and artistic activities including concerts, seminars and recordings
.
You are all invited to participate in this listening and life experience.