Kraków-Bucharest in Concert: Grand Finale of the Poland-Romania Cultural Season 2024-2025

1._orkiestra_filharmonii_im._georgea_enescu_photo_george_enescu_philharmonic.jpg, default, George Enescu Philharmonic Orchestra, photo: George Enescu Philharmonic

#music

The Poland-Romania Cultural Season 2024-2025 will conclude on 30th November with a musical finale that symbolically links Kraków and Bucharest, bringing nearly two years of shared cultural experience to a close under the slogan ‘We Share a Common Language’. The joint celebrations underline how the season has turned the language of music into a space of real encounter between artists and audiences from both countries.

A season of shared language

Launched in June 2024, the first-ever Poland-Romania Cultural Season has been a landmark initiative in the history of relations between the two countries. Organised by the Polish Ministry of Culture and National Heritage, the Adam Mickiewicz Institute and the Polish Institute in Bucharest together with the Romanian Ministry of Culture and the Romanian Cultural Institute, it has showcased how culture can become a common tongue that crosses borders.

Over almost two years, the programme has woven together exhibitions, concerts, theatre and film presentations, literary events and artistic residencies, from the opening projects in the summer of 2024 through to an extensive line-up in 2025. The result has been over 500 events and audiences numbering in the hundreds of thousands. Flagship events have ranged from major exhibitions and photography shows to theatre and music at leading festivals, offering platforms for Polish and Romanian artists to meet and collaborate.

Highlights from the Polish presentation in Romania included the exhibition The Tatras: Wróblewski, Karłowicz, Wyczółkowski at the Brukenthal National Museum in Sibiu, Leszek Możdżer’s piano concert at the Romanian Athenaeum in Bucharest, the exhibition Tadeusz Kantor: Always and Everywhere an Artist at the National Museum of Art of Romania in Bucharest, and the series of Polish projects shown at Romanian Design Week.

Meanwhile Romania’s presentation in Poland included the major exhibition Nicolae Grigorescu: Painter of the Romanian Ethos at the National Museum in Gdańsk, a range of Romanian projects displayed at Łódź Design Festival, and One Eye Laughing, the Other Crying: Art From Romania in the Ovidiu Șandor Collection at the International Cultural Centre in Kraków

At every stage, the season has highlighted the closeness of Polish and Romanian sensibilities, as well as a shared openness to experiment and dialogue.

The visual identity of the season was created by Polish and Romanian graphic arts students, who took diacritical marks characteristic of both languages as their starting point. Posters, publications and online materials featuring these distinctive signs, accompanied by the slogan ‘We Share a Common Language’, all made the idea of a shared cultural idiom visible in the public space of both countries. The programme as a whole has unfolded over roughly 18 months, from June 2024 to late 2025, with several dozen events taking place in cities and regions across Poland and Romania.

Musical finale in Kraków

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Gabriel Bebeselea, photo: Ionut Macri

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The season’s closing celebrations will unfold on 30^th November, when the Karol Szymanowski Philharmonic in Kraków hosts a special concert by the George Enescu Philharmonic Orchestra of Bucharest as part of the Eufonie Festival. One of Romania’s leading orchestras, the George Enescu Philharmonic is renowned for its interpretations of both Romanian and international repertoire, and its presence in Kraków underscores the depth of musical ties built during the season.

After 69 years, the orchestra is returning to Poland under the baton of conductor Gabriel Bebeșelea, with cellist Jaemin Han appearing as soloist. The same programme will be presented at the Warsaw Philharmonic on 1^st December 2025 to mark Romania’s National Day, making the event both a high point of the season and a gesture of diplomatic celebration.

The Kraków concert will also be the grand finale of this year’s symphonic series at the Eufonie Festival. The programme – built around George Enescu and Antonín Dvořák – includes the Interlude (Act II) and Shepherds’ Dance from Enescu’s opera Oedipe, his Symphonie Concertante in B Minor for Cello and Orchestra, Op. 8, and Dvořák’s Symphony No. 6 in D Major, Op. 60.

In the days leading up to the finale, on 29^th November the Warsaw Philharmonic will host the concert Porywy: Enescu / Wajnberg / Kodály, performed by the Orchestra and Men’s Choir of the Philharmonic under the direction of conductor Gergely, further deepening the Romanian thread running through the festival’s programme. Against this backdrop, the appearance of the George Enescu Philharmonic in Kraków on 30^th November brings the musical narrative of the season to a powerful close.

Subcarpați & Dagadana in Bucharest

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DAGADANA, photo: Treti Pivni

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On the same evening, 30th November, Bucharest will host a joint concert by Subcarpați and Dagadana – an energetic, genre-crossing finale that mirrors the symphonic celebration in Kraków with a more contemporary, hybrid sound. Subcarpați, one of the most recognisable Romanian bands, blend traditional melodies and archival recordings with electronic textures and hip-hop rhythms, creating performances that draw thousands of fans and connect folklore with today’s urban culture. Dagadana, the Polish-Ukrainian group, combine folk motifs from the region with jazz harmonies and electronic elements to build a rich, emotional and polyphonic musical narrative.

Their collaboration began during an artistic residency in Bucharest and has since developed into a long-term partnership, resulting in joint compositions and a music video shot in Maramureș with Polish and Romanian dancers in traditional costume. The Bucharest concert will be the first opportunity to experience this material live, turning the stage into a meeting point for different languages, traditions and rhythms. With its powerful beats, sampled voices and close interplay between the two bands, the evening promises to feel like a living embodiment of the season’s idea that contemporary music can carry forward the energy of village songs and shared memories.

Seeds for future collaboration

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The ceiling of the Athenaeum, photo: Sabina Costinel

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The double finale in Kraków and Bucharest sums up what has defined the Poland-Romania Cultural Season 2024-2025 from the outset: a belief that culture creates spaces where lasting relationships can form and new ideas can take shape.

An important part of this story is the concert in Bucharest’s historic Romanian Athenaeum on 29^thNovember 2025, where the same conductor, Gabriel Bebeșelea, will lead the George Enescu Philharmonic Orchestra. The event is held under the patronage of the Eufonie Festival and will be the festival’s first foreign event outside Poland, as well as its first appearance in Romania, signalling that the musical and institutional ties built during the season are already extending beyond national borders.

As Olga Wysocka, Director of the Adam Mickiewicz Institute, says:

The Polish-Romanian Cultural Season 2024-2025 was not just a series of events, but a space where bonds were formed and new ideas came to life. This freedom to experiment, to respond to genuine impulses and to look for meaning through collaboration showed that Poland and Romania – each in its own way – complement one another beautifully. What one side sought, the other side offered. Together we found shared emotions, aesthetics and artistic visions that might otherwise have taken years to uncover.

The events concluding the season highlight its artistic diversity and the range of voices it has brought together. By combining symphonic and contemporary music, and by linking a historic concert hall in Kraków with a vibrant stage in Bucharest, the finale does not end collaboration but opens the way to further projects – in the spirit of the season’s slogan: ‘We Share a Common Language’.

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Poland-Romania Cultural Season 2024-2025