After a gap of ten years, Claudio Abbado takes to the rostrum again to conduct a new special facet of the Salzburg Festival of Sacred Music, the Ouverture Spirituelle. The Italian maestro conducts the Orchestra Mozart of Bologna, an ensemble specially dedicated to performing the work of Mozart.
Dionysos
It was a daring enterprise in every respect. A work of music drama that the composer Wolfgang Rihm had carried about with him for more than 15 years – its premiere already postponed three times – was now to be committed to paper in a matter of weeks. A production team that had to plan to a tight deadline before the piece was even in existence – rehearsals began a week after composition was completed – was faced with a highly artificial text: Nietzsche’s late “Dionysos dithyrambs”, the last poetic thoughts of the philosopher, published shortly before his breakdown.
Arabella
A “lyric comedy” is what Richard Strauss and Hugo von Hofmannsthal called their last joint work, written between 1927 and 1929. In this acclaimed performance at the Vienna State Opera, director Sven-Eric Bechtolf shifts the action from 1860, when the work was written, to the 1920s, both eras that witnessed a massive economic crisis. Emily Magee debuted to great acclaim in the title role. Genia Kühmeier as her little sister Zdenka transfigures the role with her lyrically expressive soprano voice. She is ably supported by the splendidly radiant tenor voice of Michael Schade as the young officer Matteo. Conductor Franz Welser-Möst lends the brilliant tone colours of Strauss’s music a decidedly Viennese character with the result that the audience enjoys a production that is one of the brightest gems in Strauss’s opera oeuvre and an experience perhaps only to be encountered in Vienna.
Salzburg Festival 2012: Die Soldaten
Bernd Alois Zimmermann’s opera Die Soldaten (The Soldiers), the “highlight of the festival season” (Süddeutsche Zeitung), breaks all records! The style and structure of an opera, acknowledged as one of the 20th century’s key works, its musical and dramatic collage technique take it to the limits of what is playable. Now, in Salzburg’s Felsenreitschule, the opera has found the ideal performance venue and, with the Vienna Philharmonic under Ingo Metzmacher together with a top-flight cast of singers, ist ideal performers too.
Salzburg Festival 2012: Die Zauberflöte
A Salzburg Festival performance of The Magic Flute in Mozart’s native city is always a special event, and when it is the first performance on period instruments, conducted by the Mozart specialist Nikolaus Harnoncourt with “his” Concentus Musicus ensemble, then it is the sort of event which attracts a great degree of international attention and anticipation in advance. Anticipation which is then rewarded: “Harnoncourt conducts with precision and finesse”, wrote the Financial Times. According to the Kurier newspaper, there was “much that is new, most of it fascinating, some of it astounding in its musical interpretation”, while Concentus Musicus “produces a surprisingly powerful sound” (Financial Times).
Salzburg Festival 2012: Das Labyrinth
2012 marked the 200th anniversary of the death of Emanuel Schikaneder, certainly one of the most original and influential theater impresarios of his time and generation. What is less well-known is the fact that Schikaneder himself wrote a second part for The Magic Flute, entitled Das Labyrinth oder Der Kampf mit den Elementen (The Labyrinth, or the Struggle with the Elements). Schikaneder entrusted this work to the Bavarian composer Peter von Winter, widely celebrated in Vienna at the time. Ivor Bolton conducts his Salzburg Mozarteum Orchestra energetically, smoothly and elegantly, bringing out the best in Winter’s charming music with its cleverly interwoven echoes of Mozart. The soloists are from the top drawer: Michael Schade triumphs as Tamino, while Thomas Tatzl and Anton Scharinger are a brilliant young and old Papageno. Coloratura soprano Julia Novikova is in full command of her role as the Queen of the Night.
Salzburg Festival 2012: Ariadne auf Naxos
“The vocals are pure gold”, wrote the Berliner Zeitung. Emily Magee masters the challenge of her complex character’s richly nuanced vocal lines, while Elena Mosuc as Zerbinetta produced her coloratura cascades with breathtaking ease, and Jonas Kaufmann received accolades from the critics for his role debut as the “best Bacchus ever” (Berliner Zeitung). Daniel Harding and the Vienna Philharmonic provided the necessary musical foundations to this performance of Strauss’ Ariadne auf Naxos, in a special version for the Salzburg Festival created by Sven-Eric Bechtolf of the original version from 1912. Written immediately after the great success of Der Rosenkavalier, Ariadne auf Naxos was a combination of mythological opera and Molière’s drama Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme, though Strauss expunged all trace of the latter in his second version of 1916. To mark the centenary of the first version, a sensational project has created a daring production fulfilling the composer’s original dream of a “Gesamtkunstwerk”.
Salzburg Festival 2012: La Bohème
For the first time in its long history, the Salzburg Festival performs Giacomo Puccini’s La Bohème in the Great Festival Hall, offering a unique and rare music highlight. Anna Netrebko wins acclaim yet again in the lead role, giving a “deeply melancholic reading of Mimi”, according to the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. Completing the dream couple she has Piotr Beczala at her side, whose rock-solid tenor voice keeps you with him at every turn.The protagonists are supported by a cheeky Nino Machaidze as Musetta and a strong male ensemble headed up by a resourceful Alessio Arduini. Daniele Gatti conducting the Vienna Philharmonic ensured “shimmering transparency of sound … And Italian style” (Süddeutsche Zeitung) and “reveals the orchestral sound, bringing the tone colours to full glow” (Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung).
Karajan The Second Life
The film ‘Karajan – The Second Life’ offers a fascinating glimpse of the reality of Karajan’s work in the recording studio, painting a nuanced portrait of the conductor and his musical ideas. The main focus is on the question of what will remain of Karajan, who recorded more albums than any other musician, and of his incomparably ambitious artistic legacy. The film includes a wealth of archival footage never shown before (about 90% of the music excerpts shown have never been released before), depicting Karajan during rehearsals and recording sessions, including works that have not been shown under his baton previously on film or TV (e.g. Le Sacre du printemps and Siegfried). Renowned colleagues and contemporaries of Karajan are interviewed: Anne-Sophie Mutter, Peter Alward, David Bell, Brigitte Fassbaender, Eberhard Finke, Wolfgang Gülich, Hans Hirsch, Klaus König, Krzysztof Polonek, Ernst Pöppel, Godehard Pruin, Klaus Stoll, Peter Uehling, Hans Weber and Andrew Wedman. Excerpts from privately recorded phone conversations between Karajan and his recording producer Günter Hermanns were evaluated exclusively for this film, conveying an authentic insight into the way Karajan worked with his team.
The Solti Centenary Concert
The renowned World Orchestra for Peace honors with this very special concert the 100th birthday of ist founder Sir Georg Solti – celebrating the story of Solti‘s musical life with works that were of special significance, such as MOZART’s Figaro overture STRAUSS’ tone poem Don Juan, the Adagietto from MAHLER’s Symphony No. 5, Bartók’s Concerto for Orchestra and select arias and ensembles from operas by MOZART and VERDI. It is presented and linked from the stage by his widow, Lady Valerie Solti. The concert features Valery Gergiev as conductor of the World Orchestra for Peace and worldclass soloists Angela Gheorghiu and René Pape together with outstanding young alumni of the Solti Foundation and the Solti Accademia di Bel Canto established after his death.