The festival will open with a Caja de Madrid Foundation production: La Paz Universal or El Lirio y la Azucena, to verses by Pedro Calderón de la Barca, featuring La Grand Chapelle directed by Albert Recasens, Antiqua Escena and the Ana Yepes Dance Company. It will be followed by a performance of Cavalieri’s Rappresentatione di Anima et di Corpo given jointly by the Ensemble Gilles Binchois and the Sacqueboutiers de Toulouse conducted by  Dominique Vellard and L’Arpeggiata under the direction of Cristina Pluhar.

On Palm Sunday, Hermann Stinders will offer a recital of harpsichord music by Johann Jacob Froberger, and there will also be a performance by Peter Donohoe, who as artist in residence will offer several concerts. Also taking part will be Paul Dombrecht’s Il Fondamento and Tenebrae (scheduled to appear in another concert with Nigel Short), the Spanish National Youth Orchestra, conducted by José Luis Estellés, and the soprano Mary Carewe and the ballerina Catherine Allard in a programme consisting of the world premiere of La Esfera de Pascal by Fernández Guerra, a work commissioned by the festival, and Weill’s Seven Deadly Sins, a co-production of the Cuenca Religious Music Week and the Fourth Centenary of Don Quixote – Castilla La Mancha.

The festival will also host the first Spanish performance of another commissioned work, this time by Lera Auerbach, in a co-production with the Bremen Music Festival and the Philharmonische Gesellschaft Bremen. The festival’s line-up of artists also includes the Monteverdi Choir and English Baroque Soloists under the direction of John Eliot Gardiner;  the Spanish National Choir with Mireia Barrera and the Spanish National Youth Orchestra with Reinbert de Leeuw; the Duix Ensemble; the RAI National Symphony Orchestra of Turin conducted by Juanjo Mena; the Ruggero Maghini Philharmonic Choir of Turin and the Coro di Voci Bianche I Piccoli Musici; Capilla Flamenca, conducted by Dirk Snellings; Philippe Herreweghe with his Orchestre des Champs Elysées and Collegium Vocale Gent; the Cuarteto Granados; the Schola Antiqua directed by Juan Carlos Asensio, and Alia Mvsica directed by Miguel Sánchez.

The week-long celebration of religious music will draw to a close in the cathedral with a medieval liturgical drama, the 13th-century Vich Manuscript Visitatio Sepulchri, performed by Alia Mvsica with musical direction by Miguel Sánchez and artistic conception and stage direction by Rafael Benito.