Salzburg Concerts

 I wonder if any of my innumerable international readers will also be attending the Salzburg Festival this summer? If so, I think it would be wonderful if we could get together for lunch one day. Just to tempt you, I'm going to list the concerts for which I have applied for tickets. How it works is, in December of the previous year, i.e. now, the program of the festival is posted online here. You have until January 22 to get your requests in and you will be informed of what tickets you have been allotted by the end of March.

There are seven opera productions, a number of plays, a ballet, and thirteen concert series of all sorts, from lieder recitals and piano recitals to chamber music, orchestras and so on. The Vienna Philharmonic is the house band; they give five concerts, each one repeated, plus they are in the pit for the operas. There are eleven guest orchestras playing a total of fourteen concerts. These include Utopia, Teodor Currenzis' new group, the English Baroque Soloists, the Oslo Philharmonic, the Berlin Philharmonic the Bavarian Radio Orchestra and a few others. There are eleven concerts with special emphasis on Schoenberg on the occasion of the 150th anniversary of his birth. Lots and lots of concerts!

Here are the ones I requested:

• July 26th at the Kollegiankirche, Jordi Savall conducting the Concert des Nations in music by Delalande, Charpentier and Pärt
• July 27th: two concerts, a Mozart Matinee at the Grosser Saal of the Mozarteum with the Mozarteum Orchestra conducted by Adam Fischer in works by, yep, Mozart AND pianist Igor Levit at the Grosses Festspielhaus with works by Bach, Brahms and Beethoven
• July 28th, at the Grosses Festspielhaus, Don Giovanni by Mozart with Teodor Currenzis conducting the Utopia Choir and Orchestra in a new production by Romeo Castellucci
• July 29th, at the Haus für Mozart, Lea Desandre, Thomas Dunford and the Jupiter Ensemble in works by Dowland and Purcell.

If it just stopped right there, that would be a pretty great festival, but there is lots more to come.

• August 1st, at the Grosser Saal of the Mozarteum, the Camerata Salzburg with works by Wagner, Schreker and Schoenberg.
• August 2nd, The Idiot, opera by Mieczysław Weinberg after the Dostoevsky novel with Mirga Gražinytė-Tyla conducting the Vienna Philharmonic
• August 3rd, another Mozart Matinee in the Grosser Saal of the Mozarteum with Ivor Bolton conducting the Salzburg Bach Choir and the Mozarteum Orchestra in works for chorus and orchestra by, you guessed it
• August 5th, at the Grosses Festspielhaus, pianist Grigory Sokolov with works by Bach and others
• August 6th, at the Grosser Saal of the Mozarteum, pianist Pierre-Laurant Aimard with works by Schoenberg, Webern, Ravel and others
• August 7th, at the Haus für Mozart, pianist Evgeny Kissin with works by Beethoven, Brahms, Rachmaninoff and Prokofiev
• August 11th, another Mozart Matinee at the Grosser Saal of the Mozarteum with Roberto González-Monjas conducting the Mozarteum Orchestra in works for soprano and orchestra by Mozart with soloist Regula Mühlemann
• August 12th, at the Grosser Saal of the Mozarteum, pianist Arcadi Volodos with works by Schubert, Schumann and Liszt
• August 14th, at the Haus für Mozart, pianist Alexandre Kantorow with works by Brahms, Liszt and Bartók
• August 15th, at the Grosses Festspielhaus, Riccardo Muti conducting the Vienna Philharmonic in Bruckner's Symphony No. 8 in C minor

And that's it! I am going to miss a gazillion concerts by great orchestras and chamber groups, but I am going to see a lot of what promise to be outstanding concerts by some of the greatest artists of our day. Just a note about the geography: The big three halls are the Grosses Festspielhaus, which seats 2,200 people, the Felsenreitschule, which seats 1,400, and the Haus für Mozart which seats 1,500. These three halls are all in a row off Herbert von Karajan Platz. On the other side is the Kollegienkirche. I can't find the exact numbers, but it looks to seat around 800. Across the river, the Salzach, is the Mozarteum and its large concert hall, the Grosser Saal. In a typical bit of Austrian humor, the smaller hall of the Mozarteum is called the Wiener Saal hinting at the long-time rivalry between Salzburg and Vienna. I was lucky enough to play a short recital there when I was a young student.

Let's hear soprano Regula Mühlemann sing some Mozart.