Looking over the program for the 2024 Salzburg Festival the differences between it and the first one I attended, in 1988, come to mind. Back then I was an impoverished student (and sessional lecturer, but that's almost the same thing) enrolled in Pepe Romero's master class. And that is the first big difference: back then the guitar had a significant presence at the Mozarteum summer courses and a very minor one at the festival itself. Now that presence has been erased. I wonder if replacing Pepe Romero with Eliot Fisk had something to do with that?
Another absence is contemporary composers. In 1988 one of the guests at the festival was Polish composer Witold Lutosławski who conducted the premiere of his new violin concerto played by, if I recall correctly, Anne-Sophie Mutter. Another composer guest was Karlheinz Stockhausen who brought his "family" of associated musicians with him from Köln. They gave seven different concerts of his chamber music, all from memory. It was in a smaller hall at the Mozarteum and I had the opportunity to chat with him afterwards. Prominent contemporary composers do not seem to be invited to current festivals, though each year there is a focus on a particular 20th century composer. This year it will be Schoenberg, last year it was Bartók and a couple of years ago it was Morton Feldman. No-one living.
Another feature of the 1988 festival that seems to have disappeared is the integral cycle. Back then Alfred Brendel gave a series of concerts in which he played all the piano sonatas of Schubert and the Alban Berg Quartet gave another series of concerts in which they played all the Beethoven string quartets. I'm afraid I didn't have much interest in opera back then so I don't recall what they did in that area. I was also too busy to attend many concerts what with master class every day and practicing in the evening. I did get to an open rehearsal of the Berg Quartet as well as one of their Beethoven cycle and one of the Stockhausen concerts.
On thing I find a bit surprising is that, while there are quite a few piano recitals now, there don't seem to be any violin recitals, with or without piano. But I don't recall if there were any back in 1988 either. Back then, as I recall, there were, apart from the Vienna Philharmonic, five guest orchestras. This year there will be eleven.
Here is a piece for solo flute by Stockhausen that I think was on the program in 1988.
Tell us your impression of chatting with Stockhausen! One reading about his life after approx. 1972 tends to conclude that he had lost his mind into a bizarre fantasy world, and even his pianist daughter eventually distanced herself from him. At the same time, people who chatted with him at concerts and festivals often found him surprisingly normal.
ReplyDeleteI actually forgot that I had attended two of the Stockhausen chamber music concerts--the tickets weren't expensive. My impression of him was that he was a perfectly rational, normal human being. We talked a bit about live performance vs recordings as I had mentioned that there were almost no performances of works by Stockhausen in Canada and how much I enjoyed seeing/hearing the music performed. He said that a recording was like a postcard as opposed to actually visiting a place. Good analogy.
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