Here is our pick of the best classical music festivals taking place across the Middle East, Japan, Malaysia and Taiwan during 2025.
Don't forget to also check out our useful guides to:
- The UK's best classical music festivals in 2025
- The best classical music festivals in Europe 2025
- The best 2025 classical music festivals in Canada and the USA
- The best classical music festivals 2025: Australia and South Africa
Best 2025 classical music festivals in the Middle East
Abu Dhabi Festival
United Arab Emirates, year-long
abudhabifestival.ae
Its year-round collaborative reach ensures that from Paris to Seoul, Singapore to China, the festival’s impact isn’t confined to the Emirates. Back on home ground, Japan is this year’s ‘Country of Honour’ and the New Japan Philharmonic got things off to a flying start with two concerts in February. But other traditions apply. The Labèque sisters salute Philip Glass and Ravel; violinist Augustin Hadelich mixes Bach, Coleridge-Taylor and David Lang; and shape-shifting Riley Mulherkar blows his own eclectic trumpet.
Jerusalem Lyric Opera Festival
Jerusalem, Israel, 22-24 July
lyric-opera.org
Conducted by Patrick Baton, Neeme Kuningas’s new production of Mozart’s Don Giovanni closes a festival that also boasts Handel’s Rinaldo, a popular triumph at its 1711 London premiere. But Jerusalem likes to ring the changes. An all-Bartók concert acknowledges the 80th anniversary of the composer’s death; musicals and operetta are drawn into the gregarious fold; and a bel canto matinee namechecks Bellini, Donizetti and Rossini.
2025 best classical music festivals: Middle East, Japan and Taiwan
Best 2025 classical music festivals in Taiwan
Weiwuying International Music Festival
National Kaohsiung Centre for the Arts, Kaohsiung, Taiwan, 11-20 April
npac-weiwuying.org
Architecturally inspired by the leafy canopy of the banyan tree, the National Kaohsiung Centre for the Arts is quite the home for a festival of conspicuous ambition and flair. Comprising an opera house, recital hall, playhouse and concert hall, it gives artistic directors composer Unsuk Chin and her pianist husband Maris Gothóni plenty of room for manoeuvre. ‘Quiet Revolution’ is the theme for an edition that invites Augusta Read Thomas as composer-in-residence and shines a festival focus on pianist Dezsö Ránki, violinist Inmo Yang and countertenor Kangmin Justin Kim. Szymanowski and Zemlinsky raise the curtain as Constantin Trinks conducts the National Taiwan Symphony Orchestra.
Taipei Music Academy and Festival
Taipei, Taiwan, 27 July – 10 August
taipeimaf.com
Given a faculty that casts its net over the front desks of orchestras such as the Chicago Symphony, Cleveland Orchestra, Dallas Symphony and New York Metropolitan Opera, Taipai guarantees its participants a blue-chip Academy. Following the traditional All-Star Concert and Chamberfest, Fabio Luisi heads a concluding orchestral tour juxtaposing Brahms, Strauss and Tchaikovsky’s ‘Pathétique’ Symphony.
Best 2025 classical music festivals in Malaysia
Bachfest Malaysia
Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, 23-27 July
bachfestmalaysia.com
2024 was a landmark year for Bachfest Malaysia, as its Festival Singers and Orchestra made their Leipzig Bachfest debut in that Bachian holy of holies: St Thomas’ Church. This year is shaping up to be just as auspicious. Founded by David Chin in 2015, the festival celebrates its 10th anniversary and as the centrepiece proposes a performance of the St Matthew Passion. Solo recitals include the Goldberg Variations and solo violin Partitas, while the finale treats the Thomaskantor to a jazzy makeover.
2025 best classical music festivals: Middle East, Japan and Taiwan
Best 2025 classical music festivals in Japan
Suntory Hall Chamber Music Garden
Suntory Hall, Tokyo, 7-22 June
suntory.com
In a Tokyo June, chamber music blossoms, and this year’s festival unfurls to the rich timbres of a cello quartet probing Bach and Frescobaldi. Alongside a formidable-sounding ‘Concert for Challenged Children’, named after three of its sibling members, the Schumann Quartet from Germany shoulders a Beethoven cycle; Debussy prefaces the exquisite moonbathing of Schoenberg’s Pierrot Lunaire; and visitors include the Hedenborg Trio, the Israel Chamber Project and the returning Aoi Trio.
Pacific Music Festival
Sapporo, Japan, 9-29 July
pmf.or.jp
Giving young musicians from across the world an opportunity to learn and perform together, an Academy is at the heart of the festival Leonard Bernstein established some three-and-a-half decades ago. And it falls to his fizzing Candide Overture to launch this year’s edition under conductor Karina Canellakis. Members of the Philharmonics of Vienna and Berlin collaborate in chamber music; the PMF Host Concert pairs Schubert and Shostakovich; Marek Janowski, meanwhile, conducts Wagner, Schumann and Richard Strauss to wrap things up.