With the title Totem, from May 16 to June 10, 2026, the Padua and Veneto Orchestra Foundation announces the sixth edition of Veneto Contemporanea, the OPV festival dedicated to the music of the present and to some great figures of the twentieth century. Three events between music and dissemination with some of the most appreciated performers and well-known music communicators in the Sala dei Giganti at Palazzo Liviano.

The festival will be inaugurated on Saturday, May 16, with the world premiere of No Landscape #2, the Piano Concerto by composer Nicola Sani, a new commission from OPV, featuring soloist Erik Bertsch. The evening will continue with the performance of György Ligeti’s Concert Românesc, and with Ohoi “The creative principles,” a work for 16 spatialized strings by Giacinto Scelsi.

On Tuesday, May 26, the first performance in Padua of Neither by American composer Morton Feldman will take place, which OPV honors on the centenary of his birth.

The festival will conclude on Wednesday, June 10, with Il novello Perseo by Salvatore Sciarrino, an opera born in Padua in 1990 under the title Perseo e Andromeda at the Center for Computer Sonology – CSC, in close collaboration with sound directors Alvise Vidolin and Paolo Zavagna.