Salzburg 2025

 

This is the cover of the 2025 Salzburg program, which, oddly, is the first program book I have ever seen as I usually go online. The reason I have it is that the Festival, without my asking, just mailed it to my office. Probably because I have attended three festivals in recent years. I'm in the process of planning and building a house for myself, so I was rather planning on not attending this year. BUT!

The program is a hefty 156 page book which heralds what seems to be a renewed approach to the festival programming. I have mentioned before some differences between current programming and what was done in the late 1980s when I was a student there. Back then they had two prominent living composers in attendance with their music: Karlheinz Stockhausen (whom I met) and Witold Lutosławski (his new violin concerto was being premiered). But in recent years, no living composers, instead they had a "focus" on a 20th century composer. Last summer it was Arnold Schoenberg. And most of the festival programming was core repertoire. But for the coming festival they have changed the approach considerably. For one thing, instead of seven opera productions, there are twelve and it looks as if five of them are by living composers. There are also some premieres of new dance projects. And instead of a focus on one 20th century composer, they honor two: Dmitri Shostakovich and Pierre Boulez. Finally the chance to hear concert performances of Boulez, rare in recent years. There are also performances of major works by Hans Werner Henze and Luigi Nono and of two major works by Igor Stravinsky: L'Histoire du Soldat and Oedipus Rex. From Shostakovich we have not only the Symphony No. 10 in the version for piano four hands and the orchestral version, but also a piano concerto and the whole of the 24 Preludes and Fugues for piano. Oh, and three string quartets and an evening of chamber music.

In a real tour-de-force, pianist Víkingur Ólafsson is playing the last three piano sonatas by Beethoven in the first half of his recital and the Art of Fugue by Bach in the second half. And don't despair, there will be a lot of Mozart--five concerts entirely devoted to his music.

I've just skimmed the surface as there are loads of other concerts devoted to a long list of composers. For example, there are five concerts by the Vienna Philharmonic under various conductors and ten guest orchestras including the Royal Concertgebouw and the Berlin Philharmonic. Also ten piano recitals including, of course, Grigory Sokolov.

I really can't afford to attend this year, but maybe I will find a way. We have until January 21 to apply for tickets at the festival site:

https://www.salzburgerfestspiele.at/en/tickets/programme?season=9