The second Festival weekend will be opened on Thursday, 17 August 2023, by Rudolf Buchbinder together with the Estonia Festival Orchestra conducted by Paavo Järvi.

The programme includes Beethoven's Third Piano Concerto and Tchaikovsky's First Symphony.
On the following day, the Budapest Festival Orchestra with Iván Fischer will be performing. The soloist in Haydn's Trumpet Concerto will be the young ARD competition winner Selina Ott, who celebrated her Grafenegg debut at the 2022 Midsummer Night's Gala. Following the concert, musicians of the Tonkünstler Orchestra will perform a late night session at the Reitschule.
The concert on 19 August 2023 marks the 50th anniversary of the Tonkunstler Orchestra in Grafenegg to the day. On 19 August 1973, Beethoven's «Coriolan» overture was heard in the castle courtyard - in 2023, the concert will open with the premiere of a fanfare by Composer in Residence Philippe Manoury at the Wolkenturm. The anniversary concert promises an upbeat evening under principal conductor Yutaka Sado with a programme based around Gershwin and Bernstein.
For the matinee of the second Festival weekend, the Orchestra della Svizzera Italiana with its principal conductor Markus Poschner and pianist and Buchbinder student Anastasia Voltchok will be guests in the Grafenegg Auditorium, before the Philharmonia Orchestra London plays at the Wolkenturm in the evening. Christian Tetzlaff will be the soloist in Elgar's violin concerto, and the orchestra will be conducted by Santtu-Matias Rouvali.