Translated material
Let's live without a motto
Anniversary of the Salzburg Festival - the beginning of a new era
Yesterday, the Salzburg Festival, the largest music and theater forum in Europe, started: Hugo von Hofmannsthal's famous play "The Name" was performed on Cathedral Square, just like ninety years ago. However, the forum not only celebrates its 90th anniversary, but also enters a period of interregnum: the current intendant (artistic director) Jürgen Flimm is retiring, and his successor Alexander Pereira will take the intendant’s chair only a year later. During the transition period, the festival will be headed by Markus Hinterhäuser, one of the strongest players in Flimm's team, who is responsible for the formation of concert programs. A year ago, when the forum was plagued by administrative problems, Hinterhäuser did not hide his irritation with the ambiguous motto “Game of Power.” “I’m not sure that the festival needs such themes: anything can be added to them,” he asserted. “Perhaps we will live the 2010/11 season without a motto at all.”The current festival is entitled: “Where God and man collide, tragedy arises.” It is under this universal slogan that the works of Gluck, Mozart, Bellini, Gounod, Strauss and Berg are presented in the opera program. And today it opens with the world premiere of our contemporary Wolfgang Rihm's opera "Dionysus" directed by Pierre Audi. Ingo Metzmacher and the German Symphony Orchestra of Berlin are responsible for the musical side - this is their last joint action: one of the best modern conductors parts with an excellent team, not finding a common language with its administration. But at the festival, the Berlin orchestra performs a very important function: this year, unlike the three previous seasons, there are no invited orchestras in Salzburg who came here for a long period with specially prepared programs. Partially filling this crisis gap, Metzmacher and his orchestra will spend a couple of weeks at the festival to perform "Dionysus" four times and open "The Continent of Rome."
Hinterhäuser's know-how, "Continents", has become one of the highlights of the forum in recent years: it is a series of concerts dedicated to one or another composer of the last century, whose work is presented in the context of music from various eras. In previous years, the public discovered the continents of Giacinto Scelsi, Salvatore Sciarrino, Edgar Varese, and, for example, Monteverdi could appear in the same program with Varese. This time, no less unexpected combinations are promised: the first program of "Continent" will compare the ballet "Tutuguri" by Rome and the large-scale work "Hoefora" by Milhaud, although in advance it is difficult to understand what is common between the cold music of Rome and the emotional, humorous world of Milhaud, a member of the French " Sixes." Gesualdo and Dowland, Schumann and Bruckner will also join Rome, one of the most authoritative and prolific composers of our time. Participants in the cycle include the Hilliard Ensemble and the Arditti Quartet, which will perform both individually and together, as well as the best European new music ensembles Klangforum Wien and Ensemble Modern.
Parallel to "Continent" there is another series of concerts dedicated to one or another romantic composer; in previous years it was Schumann, Schubert, Liszt, this time the audience is treated to “Scenes from Brahms”. The project opens with a solo concert by Valery Afanasyev: under Hinterhäuser, this pianist, like Grigory Sokolov, became a regular guest of the festival, which the future interim intendant is especially proud of. On one of the evenings dedicated to Brahms, Afanasiev and Hinterhäuser will appear on stage together to play the “German Requiem” in a chamber version on two pianos with a choir and soloists; The program also includes Shostakovich's last quartet. Gidon Kremer also came up with the idea of combining Brahms with Shostakovich - in a duet with Afanasyev he will perform violin sonatas of both composers. Violinist Christian Tetzlaff, violist Tabea Zimmerman, clarinetist Jörg Widmann, the Hagen Quartet and many others will also pay tribute to Brahms.
By analogy with last year’s cycle of Beethoven symphonies, presented by the Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie (Bremen) led by Paavo Järvi, conductor Philipp Herreweghe and the Camerata Salzburg orchestra offer to hear all of Schumann’s symphonies. They will be complemented by Chopin piano concertos performed by Ivo Pogorelich - this year marks the two hundredth anniversary of the birth of both composers. Evgeny Kissin also decided not to separate the heroes of the day - Schumann and Chopin appear in both of his programs. Clavirabends by Maurizio Pollini and Christian Zimmermann will be dedicated only to Chopin.
In addition to Herreweghe, the festival features three more conductors whose best achievements are associated with the performance of Baroque music. However, they all perform purely Mozartian programs - Mark Minkowski, Ton Koompan, and Ivor Bolton. Together with Bolton, one of Mozart’s concerts will be performed by Fazil Say, a Turkish pianist and composer who has played in Moscow more than once. Yesterday morning in Salzburg the world premiere of his composition for piano and orchestra “Burning Nirvana”, commissioned especially for this day, took place. It was just one of the numbers preceding the official opening of the concert-dedication to Istanbul, the European Capital of Culture in 2010. The Istanbul Philharmonic Orchestra played works by Hindemith, Respighi, Mozart, as well as the rhapsody Kocekce by the Turkish classic Ulvi Cemal Erkin, which was also performed in Moscow in June. Both in Salzburg and here, the performance of this rare composition was probably the only one for many years back and forth.
The foundation of the festival concert system continues to be the five programs of the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra. The most intriguing of them will be presented by Riccardo Muti: Prokofiev’s oratorio “Ivan the Terrible” will be performed three times. Together with the star couple of soloists, Olga Borodina and Ildar Abdrazakov, Gerard Depardieu will appear on stage to perform the part of the reader in Russian. Muti proved himself to be a brilliant interpreter of this work on the long-ago London recording, and there is no need to worry about the quality. Much more questions are raised by the festival's second opera premiere after Dionysus, also entrusted to Muti: Gluck's Orpheus and Eurydice. Muti, whose Verdi sounds so good, risks not finding a common language with this subtle, almost chamber music, although it is easy to assume that the maestro will prove the groundlessness of these fears and surprise with an unexpected reading of Gluck.
Two more operas are united by the aesthetics of expressionism and the images of the main characters bringing death. Alban Berg's "Lulu" was going to be directed by Jürgen Flimm himself in tandem with Nikolaus Harnoncourt, but for a number of reasons this remained a dream. As a result, “Lulu” is staged by director Vera Nemirova and conductor Mark Albrecht, about whom we know much less. However, much can be expected from the soloists, including Franz Grundheber (one of the best performers of the role of Wozzeck in Berg's opera of the same name), Michael Follet and Michael Schade, as well as the brilliant Patricia Petibon in the title role. An equally bright cast promises to be Strauss's Elektra, on which Nikolaus Lehnhoff and Daniele Gatti are working: Waltraud Mayer, Rene Pape, Eva-Maria Westbroek.
In addition to the opera Norma, which will be performed twice in concert, the festival will revive two productions from the year before. Gounod's opera Romeo and Juliet was staged with the star duet of Anna Netrebko and Rolando Villazon in mind, but Netrebko refused to participate that year; Now she will sing five out of nine performances, but without Villason. The highlight of the performance was the young conductor Yannick Nézet-Séguin, who will continue to take the helm. He was also entrusted with Mozart's "Don Giovanni" - the best performance of the festival before last, the entire action of which takes place in a dark forest. Conductor Bertrand de Billly, who excels in modern music, was perhaps the production's only weak link at the time, and the change seems reasonable. According to the tradition of recent years, the festival will end on August 30, and Vremya Novostei plans to follow its most important events.