Salzburg to Vienna

This morning we packed our bags and said our goodbyes to the Hotel Bristol Salzburg. I cannot say enough wonderful things about this hotel. Thank you to the staff, Mr. Muigg, the concierge, Peter, the Maitre d’hôtel, Ben the barman at Sketch, the staff of the Breakfast room, Marie-Anna at the reception and the owners and Manager. Who knows if we will be able to return to Salzburg in the future, given that my post in Rome is drawing to a close and I do not know what the future brings in July. However all our stays at Hotel Bristol were wunderbar, so danke to all.

The concert last night at the Mozarteum with Philippe Jaroussky had a surprise in that he did his 3 arias and then left, leaving the stage to les Musiciens du Louvre, who because Marc Minkowski was ill, was led by Thibault Noally first violin, they played Schubert symphony no.5, then at the end, Jaroussky came back to do an encore.

Though Jaroussky has a wonderful voice, what lacks is the acting part, it is not enough to have a perfect voice, one has to be able also to feel the emotions, last night it felt a bit flat. Could be the Jarrousky was not well he looked very red in the face, which is not normal.

Our best concert recital for me was with Thomas Quasthoff. 

Second best, the Hagen Quartet who played a piece by Schostakovitch, his string quartet no.8 composed in 1960 while visiting Dresden still in ruins from the Second World War. Third best for me was the Alban Berg piece written in memory of the young Manon Gropius who had died tragically.

During the Mozart Woche, you can go to 4 concerts a day, at 11am, 15:00, 19:30 and 22:00, all different with different artists and orchestra or ensemble, playing not only Mozart pieces but also Haydn, Schubert, Beethoven, Schostakovitch, J.S.Bach, Richard Strauss, Hugo Wolf, Alban Berg, Handel, Brahms and Holliger. So quite a variety but in a way all tied together in some fashion.

If you enjoy the study of music and its composition and how a composer came to write such music then this festival gives you a better understanding of musical compositions.

Another piece I really liked because it was so different of all other compositions by Mozart was his string quartet K.428 a later piece, apparently Mozart had a difficult time in writing this piece.

Speaking of Mozart, since the 28 January is the day after his birthday, we decided to do something we had never done, that is to visit his birthplace in the old town. The building is located on Getreide Gasse, it’s a 4-story apartment block. The family lived there for 20 years. It was an apartment building for well to do families. The family of Leopold Mozart lived in 4 rooms, with large windows and a storage room. They had a large kitchen and running water, a luxury fixture for the time. The ceilings were low which leads me to believe that they could not have been tall people, unlike today. The living room was used for meals, entertaining guests and family, you simply rearranged the furniture, which like most houses at the time was a simple affair.  There was another large room; the birth room, all births and all the activities surrounding it took place in that room. A sad fact of the time was that one out of every second child died within the first 3 years of life. Mozart’s parents lost several children at birth or a few months after birth, only Wolfgang and his sister Nannerl survived into adulthood. 

The Mozart birthplace is a well done museum; it presents factual information about the composer, his life and  family, it also debunks many myths about Mozart’s life. His parents were well educated, his father was highly intelligent, well educated and had a very good position, financially providing a well to do life for his family. Mozart’s parents had a happy marriage and a good life.

His mother was kind hearted and she often played referee between her husband and the musical genius son.

Both of them had a difficult relationship probably because they had their own ideas about things.

Mozart spent a third of his life traveling to various cities and he enjoyed it. He performed, as was the custom then for many Princes and Bishops, they had the money to pay for performances whereas the public did not. Neither he nor his sister Nannerl where displayed by his father as trained musical monkeys. Mozart left Salzburg because the Prince Bishop and the Church stifled the city’s artistic life with religious overtones, not to forget that Salzburg then was a city of 16,000 people. Times were changing and Mozart like all young person wanted to live in a big city like Vienna, were contract’s and commissions were more readily available and were he could establish himself as a musician and composer. 

Emperor Joseph II was a modern reformist ruler, he enjoyed music and someone like Mozart could and did well at Court. Mozart contrary to modern belief was wealthy, he had debts but in the last years of his life he did quite well for himself and did not die in poverty hounded by creditors.

Mozart was quite ambitious and he did suffer some disappointments in not always getting what he wanted but on the other hand he was very famous and appreciated by many at Court in Vienna and in Europe.

 Church of St-Peter where Nannerl Mozart and Michael Haydn are buried in Salzburg.

His burial was as was the custom then in a common plot, most middle class people where buried exactly in the same manner, no cross and no tombstone. It was sufficient for the Christian soul to receive the last rites and prayers and the body buried in consecrated ground.

Not to forget that only the aristocracy and the senior clergy, bishops and cardinals received a different treatment, with elaborate mausoleums and monuments built to honour them in death. Mozart though famous did not belong to that class of people and was not as a commoner entitled to such an honour.

It was not a pauper’s funeral, as some in Hollywood would have you believe. His wife Constanza remarried many years later to an aristocrat lived in Copenhagen for a time and then returned to Salzburg where her second husband died. Mozart’s two sons Carl and Franz were like their father adept musically and had good careers, one in Lvov and the other in Milan. They were known as Mozart’s sons and enjoyed the fame during their life time.

All the pathos we have today about Mozart started to appear in the mid-19^th century with the romantic age and this is where all the myths and legends came from, of course the movie Amadeus does not help in this respect but it can be viewed like most movies as nothing more than a work of fiction and fantasy. I am glad we did this visit simply to get the real facts about his life and family.

 St-Michael Platz, entrance to the Hofburg Imperial Palace, Vienna.

Our train is now approaching Vienna West Bahnhof; we are staying at another great Hotel, Kaiserin Elisabeth on Weihburg gasse 3 by the Cathedral and the Hofburg, very central, quiet rooms and good service. Tonight we go to the Wiener StaatsOper, a first for me to hear Cosi Fan Tutte. We have only been to the Volksoper in Vienna before.

Vienna is very cold today at -10 C. I did not know it could get that cold in winter.