Concert subscription ‘Castle Rače’

In 2002, we started organizing concerts on a professional level, thus giving a new, richer content of cultural offer in the renovated Renaissance castle, which has not been the case in the municipality of Rače-Fram so far. Our aim was to get our audience used to music of a higher quality. This goal still remains a priority and the most difficult task because of constantly changing audiences’ taste and point-of-view.

It all started with New Year’s concerts in 2002, which have become traditional by now. In them, as well as in some others, a great number of excellent, mostly young, domestic and foreign artists alike has lined up over the years with interesting arrangements of compositions from various stylistic periods presenting Slovenian as well as foreign composers’ pieces. Some of the concerts were high-profile in the media, which was very important for the newly emerging cultural happenings. With these events, we attracted listeners from the wider environment (also from abroad), of different ages. Along with that, we also presented some exquisite concert ambiences in the municipality: the White Hall in the castle as well as the castle’s chapel and a large arcaded castle’s courtyard, the church of St. Anne in Fram and the church of St. Joseph the Worker in Rače. All of them can be compared to similar, more famous ones abroad as far as the acoustics, architectural aesthetics of the time and equipment is concerned.

In 2011, all the conditions were met – including the purchase of a piano – to present a concert season subscription of four concerts, which was a novelty in the cultural history of the place. It was also an opportunity for obtaining some funds from the Ministry of Culture to perform annual cycles of five concerts. The traditional New Year’s concert remains the fifth one.

The programme’s regular feature has always been to represent Slovenian musical works. We give priority to living, excellent artists who are successfully making their way into European and the world’s music space.

With high quality programmes and performers, we successfully entered the Slovenian cultural field. The concerts are often recorded and broadcast for RTV (Radio and Television Broadcasting House) as well as presented in other media.

We occasionally organize various concerts outside the subscription.

The artistic director of the concert series “Castle Rače ” is Vito Žuraj.

The managing director of the concert activity at Culture and Art Association Rače is Tone Žuraj.