Salzburg Festival, 22-26 August, 2025

22 August:

I was last in Salzburg for three days in January 2024, an occasion which was my first visit to this beautiful city. Rich with musical associations - and not just Mozart - it's the home of the famous Salzburg Festival, into which we'll be dipping our collective toes over the next few days.

As we walked to dinner, we went through the famous Mirabell Gardens. They looked very different to when I last saw them. Last year they were wet and soggy under snowy slush. Not so now!

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23 August:

Saturday saw us attend our first performances here in Salzburg on this Hayllar Music Tours visit. It's hard to imagine a more exciting start.

At 11.00 we were in the main hall of the legendary Mozarteum to hear the Mozarteum Orchestra in an all-Mozart program. A stunning venue and a stunning performance. The Clemenza overture, the K622 concerto played on viola rather than clarinet (in which form it was published in 1802), and the Jupiter symphony. A beautiful hall, a crystal clear acoustic from where we were sitting, and utterly magical performances.

The conductor was Andrew Manze (long-time fan here) and Timothy Ridout the viola soloist. And while the first half was wonderful (I loved the viola version of the concerto!), the second half was simply the greatest performance of the Jupiter I've ever heard. I was gobsmacked and totally transported.

I'd conducted the Jupiter a number of times and was never happy with it. I love the piece with a passion but never felt I knew how to do its countless miracles justice. The Mozarteum/Manze combination showed it could be done.

An added joy was meeting my former ABC colleague Christopher Lawrence in the foyer, who is here leading a tour for Renaissance tours. Of course there had to be a selfie...

Then in the evening we went to the Grosses Festspielhaus to see the Festival's new production of Donizetti's Maria Stuarda. I knew what we were in for as a video of this production's opening night was on YouTube last week, but it was thrilling to experience live. An unusual production but a riveting one, and one which did not undermine the drama. Stunning singing from start to finish. Oh, and pit band was the Vienna Philharmonic.

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24 August:

We attended just one performance today at the Salzburg Festival and it was a matinee so an earlier than usual daily report today.

I don't know how to start. I expected to experience great music-making at this prestigious festival, but given what we saw today - and yesterday - I'm going to fast run out of vocabulary.

Today at 11.00 we were back at the Grosses Festspielhaus for a concert by the Vienna Philharmonic, who just over twelve hours before were in the pit for Maria Stuarda. Now they filled the massive stage of this magnificent theatre.

The music director of the New York Metropolitan Opera, Yannick Nézet-Séguin, was on the podium directing an all-Wagner program. The gentle and understated (but immaculate) first half comprised the Prelude to Lohengrin and the Siegfried Idyll. After interval the floodgates opened with a cataclysmically thrilling concert performance of Act 1 of Die Walküre.

It was incredible. I mean, this orchestra knows this music inside out and they're just amazing - always - but the three singers were beyond wonderful. I was only a few rows from the front and was mesmerised by the drama in every word, every note. The cast did minimal physical acting but were really acting every second with their faces, subtle gestures, and body language. They clearly knew not only every detail of the voice parts but reacted - subtly but powerfully - to important moments in the orchestra. It was an object lesson in less-is-more.

But the voices? There was as much "more" as you'd need. Elza van den Heever was Sieglinde. I really have no words to describe how good she was. If I tried I'd write thousands. I couldn't take my eyes off her. Stanislas de Barbeyrac was a brilliant Siegmund. Together they played the incestuous twins from hesitant to exultant in a way I'd never really seen before.

Hunding was sung by John Relyea. Masterful, dark, brooding, powerful. And all three voices were simply beautiful. Nézet-Séguin's reading of the score was dramatic but not overdone. Others may differ but I really liked what he did with the score, especially in not rushing the infamously difficult prelude. I could easily have sat through it all again.

Who needs scenery?

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25 August:

[Content warning: this post contains yet another rave about yet another gobsmacking performance. If continued raves offend, move on.]

Monday in Salzburg started, after my talk, with us heading out of town and back across the border into Germany to visit Königssee. This beautiful lake surrounded by massive mountains is one of nature's miracles. We caught the ferry to St Bartholomew's, a tiny 17th century pilgrimage church on the shore of the lake, where we had lunch.

It is a truly magical place. I was wandering around in a kind of daze. The mountains are right in front of you yet seem distant because of their height. Spatial awareness just goes crazy. And the lake is beyond beautiful.

On our return to Salzburg we had time to rest and recharge before returning to the Grosses Festspielhaus, this time for a concert performance of Giordano's Andrea Chénier.

I have to confess that while I love Puccini, the work of his verismo contemporaries often doesn't impress me. I'm also happy to confess that hearing Chénier live for the first time without the trappings of a production enabled me to appreciate the power and beauty of this great score.

And for this performance the Salzburg Festival had spared no expense. Every element was magnificent. The big cast, right down to the very small roles, was furnished with incredibly good singers. The orchestra - again from the Mozarteum - was astonishing, playing with crispness and precision we rarely hear in verismo. And the chorus, from the Vienna State Opera...well need I say more?

But there were four stars among the stars. Baritone Luca Salsi as Gérard was having the best time in a role he clearly adores. The only singer to perform from memory, he was magnificent vocally and dramatically.

Soprano Elena Stikhina cavassed Maddalena's transition from snob to lover to martyr beautifully, her voice more than up to the demands of the final two acts, soaring gloriously.

The incredibly demanding title role, with four huge arias, a taxing duet, and much else, was in the hands of tenor Piotr Beczała. He was absolutely in control, had the audience in the palm of his hand, and thrilled with a voice just made for the part. It was a privilege to witness.

The final star was the conductor, Marco Armiliato. Conducting from memory and clearly knowing (and loving) every single note, this was an object lesson in finding the perfect balance between passion and clarity. On a purely technical level, the way he marked beats and bars of silence was completely perfect for the orchestra's needs, something one sees so rarely. And his attention to the shaping of phrases, and internal balance, was detailed but not fussy. I was deeply impressed.

The entire audience was on its feet at the end. The shouts and cheers were long and loud, and utterly deserved.

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26 August:

After my fifth talk for our guests on this Hayllar Music Tours visit to Austria, our final full day in Salzburg saw us visit Schloss Hellbrun. This pleasure palace (for want of a better term) was built in the early 17th century by Prince-Archbishop Markus Sittikus.

The building itself is not massive, by palatial standards, but it's set within beautiful gardens and surrounded by amusing grottoes full of trick water effects. These are powered by extraordinarily complex gravity-fed systems which are still fully functional.

They're not only designed to be beautiful but also for fun. Hidden jets shoot water onto the unsuspecting guest, and our delightful guide had great fun getting us wet at unexpected times as water shot out from hidden openings.

Fortunately we had yet another utterly perfect sunny day so we dried off quickly!

After a beautiful lunch in the Schloss Hellbrun restaurant we returned to our hotel to prepare for our final performance at the Salzburg Festival.

In the Grosses Festspielhaus in the evening we attended our final opera of this tour, Verdi's Macbeth.

The production, directed by Krzysztof Warlikowsi, was extremely modern and really too complex to detail here. Aspects of it I really loved, others not so much. I particularly disliked the ending and felt some of the apparent Third Reich suggestions laid on too thickly. The use of video, though, as an added dimension of storytelling I liked very much.

But those reservations apply only to the production. Musically - as we've come to expect here - it couldn't be faulted. Philippe Jordan conducted superbly, and with the Vienna Philharmonic in the pit the orchestral sound made Verdi's score seem more "alive" than this early score (in the revised Paris version) often sounds.

Any Macbeth depends on the central couple and here we had two sublime singers whose acting matched their vocal powers. Vladislav Sulimsky was Macbeth and Asmik Grigorian was Lady Macbeth. Both were stunning in every respect.

Special mention should also be made of the Vienna State Opera Chorus. Of course their sound was wonderful. But this must be the largest chorus I've ever seen in a staged opera; there would have been at least a hundred of them. The torrent of sound, in the final chorus especially, was quite overwhelming.

And so our time in Salzburg comes to an end. Later this morning (Wednesday) we move on to Part Two of our Austrian odyssey.

First posted on Facebook

Königssee