The festival runs in the Polish capital from Friday to September 26.
This year's theme is "Signs," with music presented alongside words, graphics, film, gesture, dance, light and performance.
Festival director Jerzy Kornowicz said the program reflects a world in which audiences are surrounded by competing signs and messages.
"We are immersed in a sea of signs, and there is nothing left for us to do but try to recognize and read them," he said during a presentation of the program in Warsaw last Tuesday.
Kornowicz linked the theme to information overload, fake news and conflicts conducted through traditional and online media.
He said some works respond directly to that environment, while others offer an escape into abstraction.
The main festival and its Warsaw Autumn Club strand will present 96 works, including 25 world premieres and 40 Polish premieres.
Twenty-one were commissioned by Warsaw Autumn alone or with partner organizations.
Nearly half of the repertoire is by composers associated with Poland. Among the international composers given particular prominence this year are Norway's Trond Reinholdtsen, Canada-born Annesley Black, Denmark's Niels Rønsholdt, American composer Kelley Sheehan and France's François Sarhan.
Reinholdtsen, described by organizers as an enfant terrible of new music, will present work that challenges established musical forms and symbols. His Ø: The Chosen Ones turns opera inside out in a work dealing with Europe, imperial power and disintegration.
Polish artist Katarzyna Krakowiak will stage Paradiso. Plant Parade at the Palace on the Isle in Warsaw’s Royal Łazienki Museum. The performance combines music, movement and theatrical elements, with performers including rapper Asthma, countertenor Michał Sławecki, violist Rafał Zalech and vocal ensemble proModern.
The festival also includes the 16th Little Warsaw Autumn, its program for younger audiences.
Nearly 500 children and young people, 15 youth choirs and ensembles, 14 conductors and 14 composers will take part.
That program includes 20 premieres of musical and spoken-word works, ranging from miniatures to site-specific audio dramas. The pieces explore subjects including nature, mountains and the city as a musical score.
Founded in 1956 during Poland’s post-Stalinist political thaw, Warsaw Autumn became a rare point of contact with Western avant-garde music during the communist era.
It remains a major international contemporary music festival and is organized by the Polish Composers' Union.
(rt/gs)
Source: IAR/PAP