The orchestra is an ideal society. It offers conditions in which young musicians can break away from their own individual thoughts and focus on creating something together. The most developed societies in the world invest in the development of orchestras, as well as in young musicians. They do this to have citizens who are well educated and who can work with others.
Aleks Klein – oboe, ILYO 2019 tutor, soloist of the Calgary Philharmonic Orchestra

The musicians who will be part of this year's International Lutosławski Youth Orchestra are awaiting two weeks of intensive work.
Classes will start on Sunday, August 2, 2020, and will last until Wednesday, August 12, 2020. Participants will participate in live sessions with tutors, online workshops in the field of Alexander Techniques and will be able to get tips on how to prepare audio video recording. All this so that, despite the situation that has happened to all of us, we do not lose touch with you! This way, hopefully we will allow you to prepare a joint performance of one of the Ninth Symphony of Ludwig van Beethoven to commemorate the 250th anniversary of the birth of this great composer. In addition, project participants will have the opportunity to work on chamber forms, the patron of our project Witold Lutosławski and one of the greatest representatives of composers from the Visegrad Group countries – Bela Bartok.

The International Lutosławski Youth Orchestra in Szczecin – the eighth edition is co-financed by the Governments of Czechia, Hungary, Poland and Slovakia through Visegrad Grants from International Visegrad Fund. The mission of the fund is to advance ideas for sustainable regional cooperation in Central Europe.

We invite you to watch the film showing what the struggles of the musicians taking part in last year's edition of the ILYO 2019 workshop looked like, culminating in the final concert at the Golden Philharmonic Hall in Szczecin – 30 August 2019. The orchestra was conducted for the third time by maestro Rune Bergmann – Artistic Director of the Philharmonic in Szczecin, and the musicians were accompanied by pianist Jan Wachowski. In the golden hall of the Szczecin Philharmonic, on the eve of the anniversary of the outbreak of World War II, young musicians performed the Leningrad Symphony by Dmitri Shostakovich. Of course, there was also the song of the orchestra's patron, namely Witold Lutosławski – "Variations on a Theme of Paganini".




The first edition of the ILYO project took place in 2013, when the whole world celebrated the centenary of the birth of Witold Lutosławski. Since then, every year in September, young musicians aged 18-30, both from Poland and other European countries, meet in the Mieczysław Karłowicz Philharmonic in Szczecin to discover the extraordinary and innovative work of the orchestra's patron together. During each edition of the International Lutosławski Youth Orchestra, the participants face various works of the composer, presenting his work in a broader context of music history.