The Salzburg Festival is a Go!

I was very disappointed last summer that the Salzburg Festival was cancelled as I found it such a valuable experience the year before. I posted every day on my experiences there. I have been on pins and needles for months now as to whether this year was going to go forward or not. And there were some commentators that assured me that there was no real chance it would! I can now say that it is definitely a go and I was allotted all but two of the tickets I requested. The ones I didn't get were for the Chicago Symphony who cancelled their performances and for Berlioz The Damnation of Faust (don't know the reason for that). I do have twelve tickets that I just downloaded from the website: Salzburg Festival.

The process, for me at least, was to request all the tickets back when the program was announced in December of 2020. At that point in time, everything was rather up in the air due to the pandemic, but they were working very hard to put everything together. In early May I was informed that I was going to receive twelve tickets (out of the fourteen I requested), which is a pretty good result. If you want tickets, especially to the most popular concerts, it is best to request them early. Online ticket sales of unallotted seats just went on sale early this month so you can probably still purchase them.

Here are the concerts I have tickets for:

• Morton Feldman: four pieces for chorus and instrumental ensemble including Rothko Chapel
• Pianist Arcadi Volodos in recital with music by Brahms and Schubert
• Arnold Schoenberg: Pierrot Lunaire plus works by Johann Strauss in arrangements by Schoenberg and Webern
• Morton Feldman: his opera Neither, text by Samuel Beckett.
• Teodor Currenzis conducting his musicAeterna chorus and orchestra in music by Rameau
• Benjamin Bernheim and Carrie-Ann Matheson in a recital of Dichterliebe by Robert Schumann and a song cycle by Ernest Chausson.
• Riccardo Muti conducting the Vienna Philharmonic with chorus and soloists in Beethoven's Missa Solemnis
• Richard Strauss: Elektra with Franz Welser-Möst and the Vienna Philharmonic
• Luigi Nono, Intolleranza 1960 with dancers from the Salzburg Experimental Academy of Dance and the Vienna Philharmonic
• Mozarteum Orchestra conducted by Jörg Widman in music by Mozart
• Daniil Trifonov, pianist, in music by Bach: the D minor Chaconne arranged by Brahms, followed by the Art of Fugue.
• Gustav Mahler Jugendorchester conducted by Manfred Honeck: music by Wagner and Shostakovich (Symphony No. 10)

And that's it! I had to miss a long list of fantastic concerts because they were outside my dates or because they conflicted with other concerts. Every day there are three or four concerts of superb quality plus plays, movies and workshops. There is no Summer Academy this year, so there won't be masterclasses or student concerts.

I am seeing three operas, two of them avant-garde, also two concerts of Morton Feldman. Every year they do a focus on a particular neglected composer. This year it is Feldman whose music is being rediscovered these days. I am taking the opportunity to hear works that I never usually have the opportunity to like the Missa Solemnis, Dichterliebe and Pierrot Lunaire. These are pieces very widely recognized as being of superb quality but you rarely get to hear them: even in major urban centers.

Two years ago, in a single week, I heard three of the finest pianists performing today: Igor Levit, Yevgeny Kissin and Grigory Sokolov. This year I get to hear two more: Arcadi Volodos and Daniil Trifonov.

As before, I will do daily posts with comments on the performances and the other pleasures of Salzburg. I might get a chance to take an excursion out of Salzburg as well.