Modern Music an Integral Part of the Programme A Reform work That Stops Short Robert Maschka: Mozart's Idomeneo - 'given birth to in Salzburg' I succumbed to an irresistible temptation, I stilled a powerful passion Hector Berlioz: Les Troyens -Contents Between the Idyll of Love and the Trauma of War The Fidelity of Woman is like the Phoenix of Arabia In the terryfying shere of infernal spirits That is what makes love so wonderful The Magnetic Pole of Today's World is the West

Modern Music an Integral Part of the Programme

The special emphases in this year's Salzburg Festival concerts

The Salzburg Festival is equally distinguised for its great operas and great concerts. The Festival sees itself almost under an obligation to offer its patrons the best artists available in the world of instrumental music just as much as that of opera.

Hans Landesmann, responsible for the concerts at the Salzburg Festival, sets new directions, (Photo: Schaffler)

At the same time, when drawing up the programme, concert director Hans Landesmann sees to it that the soloists, chamber musicians, conductors and orchestras performing in Salzburg bring the whole range of their repertoires with them or even extend it specially for the Festival. That means that modern classical music and contemporary music are to be given their rightful place beside the great works of the classical repertoire. "Contemporary music must naturally have its place at the Festival - very 'normal' music like the other", says Hans Landesmann, commenting on his programme. Romantic music is one of the main points on this summer's programme.
Hans Landesmann names Robert Schumann and Johannes Brahms as the composers that will be particularly highlighted.

Romantic music with the focus on Brahms and Schumann

Schumann appears twice on the six-concert programme of the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra: at the very beginning the 'resident' orchestra of the Salzburg Festival under Wolfgang Sawallisch will perform the seldom-heard Requiem Mass op. 148, written in 1842, together with Brahms' second piano concerto. In the second concert given by the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra Riccardo Muti will also conduct Schumann - the Rhenish Symphony.
Less often heard works will also be performed in other concerts given by the Vienna Philharmonic: in connection with the production of Berlioz' opera Les Troyens Sir Roger Norrington will conduct a concert with Berlioz' tone poem Romeo et Juliette, while Zubin Mehta will perform Olivier Messiaen's powerfully resounding Turangalila Symphony, the Vienna Philharmonic thus offering a full-length Messaien programme for the first time. The "Next Generation" composer series is under the special care of Hans Landesmann.
In this series the Salzburg Festival presents younger composers of the present day with their own compositions and with such others as are important for their work. Hans Landesmann stresses the important role this series has played in the development of many composers' careers. Artists like Olga Neuwirth, Matthias Pintscher and Georg Friedrich Haas, who are so successful today, were first introduced in this series.
This year's "Next Generation" representative in Salzburg will be the Austrian composer Gerd Kühr who made a name for himself in particular with his opera entitled Stallerhof. In two concerts generously sponsored by the American arts patron, Betty Freeman, the Klangforum Vienna and its soloists will perform works by Kühr, Henze, Ives, Kurtág and others.

Richard Muti (above; 13th, 14th, 15th August, Mozart/Jupiter and Schumann/ Rhenish), Sir Roger Norrington (centre; 22nd/23rd August, Berlioz/Romeo et Juliette) and Zubin Mehta (below; 27th August, Messiaen/Turangalila Symphony - 29th August, Bruckner/Eighth Symphony) conduct the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra in seven concerts. Photos: Christian Steiner (Muti), PSF (Norrington and Mehta)

Romantic music, contemporary music and opera

Romantic, contemporary and operatic music: the chorus-and-orchestra concerts with famous guest orchestras and illustrious conductors will likewise address themselves to the main themes. What is unique about their concerts in Salzburg is that as a rule the orchestras come to the Festival city with specially arranged programmes. Thus the Orchestre de Paris under Sylvain Cambreling, for example, will be performing only works by Berlioz: the Symphonie phantastique and the tone poem Lélio; under Ivan Fischer the orchestra will even be giving the first performance of a work by the Italian composer Fabio Vacchi, commissioned by the Salzburg Festival. In a concert that also includes works by Debussy and Ravel as well as Beethoven's Fifth Symphony, Berlioz can also be heard when the phenomenal Russian soprano Olga Borodina sings with the Oslo Philharmonic Orchestra under Mariss Jansons the scene La mort de Cléopâtre.

Pierre Boulez and Wolfgang Rihm

This year - the year of his 75th birthday - the composer and conductor Pierre Boulez, who has long had a close relationship with Salzburg, will once again enrich the Festival programme with his contributions. In the context of the international "Boulez 2000" series the London Symphony Orchestra will give the premiere performance in Salzburg under his baton of two works commissioned for the series. Another prominent contemporary composer on the programme is Wolfgang Rihm. Rihm is the most important and versatile German composer of the present day. The works that appear in the chorus-and-orchestra concerts under Claudio Abbado (the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra), Kent Nagano and Helmuth Rilling, who comes to Salzburg with Rihm's The Passion According to St. Luke (composed for the Bach year), are not the only ones to be performed. In a "Portrait of Wolfgang Rihm" the Festival dedicates two chamber concerts to him. Rihm, incidentally, is also "composer in residence" at the summer academy in Salzburg's Mozarteum University of the Arts, which means he will be in Salzburg the whole summer.

Mozart, Haydn and Britten

An original and indispensable Salzburg contribution to the Festival programme are the performances given by the Camerata Academica and the Mozarteum Orchestra. Over the years Hans Landesmann and the leader of the Mozarteum Orchestra, Hubert Soudant, have gently changed the nature of the traditional Saturday and Sunday Mozart matinees in the Large Hall of the Mozarteum. Joseph Haydn now has an established position here. Last year the last of his series of six great Masses was performed; this year and next year their place will be taken by six Salzburg Masses by Mozart, three each year, with the Arnold Schönberg Choir performing under such style-specialist conductors as Ton Koopman, Frans Brüggen, Ivor Bolton and, of course, Hubert Soudant. Haydn will now be represented through symphonies in the matinee programme. This year, too, Mozart's C Minor Mass will be performed by the Mozarteum Orchestra under Soudant in St. Peter's Church.
Haydn also plays a prominent role in the three concerts of the Camerata Academica under their chief conductor, Sir Roger Norrington. All six of Haydn's Paris symphonies, supplemented by three works by Benjamin Britten, will be given wih the well-known vivacious interpretation of Norrington, for this original maestro is just as passionate a protagonist of English composers as he is of classical and romantic music.

The Salzburg Festival dedicates a Portrait to Wolfgang Rihm (left). Claudio Abbado and Kent Nagano conduct orchestral concerts by the most important German conductor of today. Helmuth Rilling comes with Rihm's Passion According to St. Luke, composed for the Bach year, and in four chamber music concerts the Klangforum Vienna, the Arditi Quartet and renowned soloists play music by Rihm. Gerd Kühr (centre) represents the Next Generation. Born in Carinthia in 1952, the composer is a dramatic luminary of contemporary Austrian music who became famous through his opera Stallerhof. The Klangforum Vienna gives two recitals of music by Kühr, Henze, Ives, Kurtág and others. Together with Hans Landesmann, Steven Isserlis (right) has drawn up a cycle dedicated to Brahms and his contemporaries. Joshua Bell, Veronika Hagen, Alexander Lonquich and Lars Vogt, outstanding soloists and chamber musicians, will be performing in the four Jahres-Zeiten concerts. Photos: Universal Edition (Rihm), Peter Manninger (Kühr), Clive Barda (Isserlis)

Steven Isserlis and friends play Brahms

A special treat awaits lovers of chamber music with the cycle of performances dedicated to Johannes Brahms and his contemporaries. Hans Landesmann has drawn up the programme together with the English cellist Steven Isserlis.
Joshua Bell, Veronika Hagen, Alexander Lonquich and Lars Vogt, outstanding soloists and chamber musicians of the younger generation, will be performing at the four recitals. Naturally, soprano diva Jessye Norman will also be making her appearance with a traditional surprise programme (sold out, unfortunately!). Lied recitals will be given by Ann Murray, Bo Skovhus, Karita Mattila and Michael Schade, while in the solo concerts the audience can hear the violinists Maxim Vengerov and Julian Rachlin and the pianists Alfred Brendel, Till Fellner, Rudolf Buchbinder, Maurizio Pollini and Jevgeniiy Kissin. In addition, Hans Landesmann has succeeded in persuading Markus Hinterhäuser, one of the most sensitive and, in matters of repertoire, most ambitious pianists of our time, to give a recital of late Beethoven sonatas.