23rd August – 1st September.
The Festival Oude Muziek Utrecht is the largest festival of its kind in the world. For ten days at the end of August, Utrecht city centre becomes the hub of the international early music sector. Since its first edition in 1982, the Festival Oude Muziek Utrecht has presented repertoire from the Middle Ages, Renaissance and Baroque, in more than 250 concerts and other events per edition, to an annual audience that has grown exponentially to more than 70,000 festival visitors. During the Festival Oude Muziek Utrecht, internationally renowned figures from the music world fraternize with talented young musicians, some of whom they coach during a series of 70 fringe concerts. The International Van Wassenaer Competition has been part of the Festival Oude Muziek Utrecht since 2014.
The Festival Oude Muziek Tournees offers the same combination of established careers and young professionals, but the formula is radically different. Where the festival stands for concentration through the unity of time and place, the season describes the exact opposite movement: during the Festival Oude Muziek Tournees we travel around the country throughout the concert season. In this way we have been reaching a large audience of early music lovers since 1986.
Since 2022, the Festival Oude Muziek Utrecht has also had a streaming service: Early Music Television, or EMTV. EMTV is the Netflix of early music; an online streaming service to which viewers subscribe on an ongoing basis. In addition, some of the offerings are available as pay-per-concert. EMTV is the international platform for early music, offering unique, high-quality content for global audiences.
