Your Ticket to Salzburg

THE VIENNA PHILHARMONIC and the Berlin Philharmonic are here, and the LSO and the Concertgebouw. Valery Gergiev, Simon Rattle, Esa-Pekka Salonen, Riccardo Muti, Franz Welser-Möst and Gustavo Dudamel are all stepping up to the podium this month. As well as the mighty Hapsburg, Nikolaus Harnoncourt – of whom more later.

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The Salzburg Festival has the reputation of being exclusive. And expensive.  (With this kind of program, you can understand why.) Certainly you will see some serious jewelry parading the Hofstallgasse – open-air foyer to the festival each evening.

The city lays claim to being Europe’s prettiest, and within its picture-postcard setting, surrounded by mountains and the rolling curve of the Salzach River, the streets and courtyards of the old city are carefully preserved but nonetheless endearingly charming.

The shops of the Getreidegasse are gilded but gorgeous: buy your gloves from August Sperl, your shirts from Babitsch, and resist (please resist) the tailored lederhosen from Bernhard Karner. Eat at Café Bazar, sleep at the Blaue Gans arthotel, cruise the festival quarter and worry about the Mastercard later.

Or… don’t. Since you haven’t got your ticket for this year (otherwise you would be there, and not here, sighing over your computer), we are bringing you the opening gala concert of this year’s Salzburg festival – which we recorded live in the city’s great concert hall, the Grosses Festspielhaus.

Nikolaus Harnoncourt conducts his “own” orchestra, the Vienna Philharmonic, (he is Guest Conductor) in a glittering performance of Schubert and Strauss, including Schubert’s 8^th (“unfinished”) Symphony.

Never the showman, or the media darling, Harnoncourt is probably more revered and admired than lauded and loved. He has not courted the heavy-hitter US orchestras, and shuns the media. Norman Lebrecht’s revealing interview with him is a rarity.

The focus of his work is to explore, with the musicians of an orchestra, a composer’s intent. His method is to suggest and propose rather than dictate and direct, and his conducting style is not grandly charismatic. But the results are intensely considered and powerful interpretations that are remarkable experiences for an audience, and greatly valued as recordings. (Lebrecht considers that Harnoncourt is the only worthy successor to von Karajan and Bernstein as a titan of the classical recording industry.)

His debut at Salzburg was delayed by a falling-out with Karajan, his former mentor and then director of the festival (who seemingly took exception to his period-instrument interpretations of Baroque classics). Since then, his contributions have been highly prized – which makes this gala concert an aficionado’s treat.