Day Two of the Festival.

Mozarteum in Salzburg


This morning we had a piano concert with Andras Schiff at the Mozarteum. He played on a 1921 Bechstein-Flugel piano, a beautiful instrument. We heard J.S.Bach Ricercare a 3 and Ricercare a 6, composed for Frederick II of Prussia around 1747. His son C.P.E. Bach worked at the Court of the King of Prussia for many years.

Mozarteum concert hall

We also heard Mozart's Fantasie c-Moll KV475 (1785) and the Klavier sonate c-Moll KV457, not my cup of tea, I would say to many pretty notes. I am suffering of over exposure to Mozart's music which is on the radio all the time.

Finally we heard Beethoven Klavier sonate c-Moll opus 111 (1821), I am not a big fan of Beethoven but this work I had not heard for a long time and Schiff is such a master on the piano that I was seduced by it. As an encore he played a piece by Schubert.

Schiff is a Hungarian Citizen but will no longer play in his native land in protest over the ultra-Nationalist policies of the current government. In the audience today was also Maestro Daniel Barenboim. This is what is nice about Sazlburg you meet everyone eventually during the Festival.

The concert ended around 1pm lunch time so we walked over to the Sacher Hotel to their Salzbach Grill which has a lovely terrace on the river. We could not find a table and a very nice older couple invited us to sit with them. This is what you do here, often if you occupy a table and there is room you can invite someone to sit at your table, it is very common at mealtimes. It turns out that they too had just seen Schiff play at the Mozarteum and also had been to the Opera Norma the day before. In the course of our lunch we discovered that their son Benjamin Schmid is a well known musician. This couple is from the region around Salzburg. It was a very pleasant lunch, very civilized.

We then went on to walk in the old town around St-Peter's Church and its cemetery which appears in one scene of that movie ''The Sound of Muzak'' with Julie Andrews. Michael Haydn the brother of Josef Haydn is buried there as is Nannerl Mozart, the sister of... The Haydn-Mozart were friends and knew each other well.

St-Peter's Cemetery and Funeral chapel next to the Church itself.

Tonight we are having dinner at the Peter's Keller which is said to be one of the oldest restaurants in Europe, apparently opened in 803 AD. http://www.stpeter-stiftskeller.at

This being Saturday all shops close at 5pm and will remain close now until Tuesday morning. Sunday is a day of rest and Monday is Pentecost and this despite the crowds of tourists in town.

Monday musical

This morning at 7 am just before the Sun rise in the East which is behind those buildings. Winter wonderland on the Rideau Canal.


This morning 26 November Winter officially arrived in Ottawa, we woke up to see about 15 cm of snow on the ground. The canal is not frozen yet but it makes for a nice wintery scene. Brilliant sunshine, maybe a little too bright, reflected off the new snow makes it a hazard if driving.

Top Winter as January and bottom Winter with the Wolves.

I usually spend my Monday's at the National Gallery of Canada, the museum is closed on Monday's but being a volunteer, we go for classes and briefings on Art. We go through the galleries and often have our talks surrounded by magnificent artwork.

The National Gallery of Canada before the snow.

I was listening to Radio Swiss Classic from Zurich on the radio and they were playing ''Dove Sono'' of the Marriage of Figaro by Mozart, sung by Barbara Fritolli in 2010 at the Opéra Bastille in Paris and I thought how lovely on this sunny snowy morning.

Concerts at the National Arts Centre, Ottawa

We have season tickets with the National Arts Centre Orchestra under the baton of Maestro Pinchas Zukerman. For several years we have been subscribing first in Rome at the Accademia Santa Cecilia to the symphonic season at the Auditorium del Parco della Musica off Via Flaminia, now back in Ottawa we continue with our attendance at concerts.

This past Thursday 26 April, the night of game 7 between the Ottawa Senators and the New York Rangers at Madison Square Garden, we went to the concert. It was presented by Eric Friesen, who has been a host of several musical programs on the CBC. Eric has one of those melodious voices of the classical radio announcers of years gone by and is a very good interviewer and an elegant presenter. On stage with Maestro Zukerman, he interviewed him asking about the pieces we were about to hear. Zukerman did a wonderful job of speaking about the pieces and what to look for in each one. It made the experience all the more interesting. We heard, a first for the Orchestra, Franz Joseph Haydn, Symphony no.70 in D major, followed by Mozart, Piano Concerto no.9 Jeune Homme played by Garrick Ohlsson. During the short interview by Friesen of Ohlsson, the pianist explained that the titled Jeune Homme is not correct, apparently Mozart wrote this piece for a lady who was probably Hungarian and whose family name was spelled something like Gynomie and it became with time Jeune Homme.

Finally we had Mozart's symphony no. 36 Linz which was composed in 3 days. A letter written from  Linz by Mozart to his father in Salzburg explains that since he had no symphony music with him, he decided on the spur of the moment to simply compose this symphony in four movements and present it to Count Thun at a concert a few days later in November 1783. According to Maestro Zukerman, this was a novelty at the time and showed how Mozart was a forward thinker, probably 100 years ahead of his time.

We plan to also get Ballet and theatre season tickets for the Fall. So we should be quite busy all around.
But this is what you have to do here in Ottawa. We are also members now of the 3 big museums, The National Gallery, The Museum of Civilizations, The War Museum.  

Mozart Woche, Salzburg

We are this week at the Mozart Week Festival in Salzburg. This morning we attended at the Mozarteum concert hall on Schwarz Strasse. the performance of this Masque, an opera in concert form, Acis and Galatea by Handel and reworked by Mozart some 30 years after the death of Handel in March 1789. The idea was to update the work to suit the taste of the time.

26 January 2011 at the Bristol.

Mozarteum, Les Musiciens du Louvre & the Salzburger Bachchor

The players this morning were Les Musiciens du Louvre with Maestro Marc Minkowski and the Salzburger Bachchor, Toby Spence sang the role of Acis, Julia Kleiter sang the role of Galatea and Markus Brutscher was Damon and Mika Kares was Polyphem. All good voices, I really liked the strong voice and good acting of Mika Kares. Toby Spence had a strong clear voice and good diction as this piece was sung in the German version. Truly beautiful music done very well by all.

This evening we are going to hear the Vienna Philarmonic orchestra at the Gross Festspielhaus however there has been a change to the program as maestro Nicolaus Harnoncourt is ill and will not conduct, we do not know who has taken his place for this evening and Gidon Kremer who was to appear also decided to pull out because Hanoncourt will not be there. Obviously Mr. Kremer is more interested in his image than in the public who came to see him play. Obviously another silly prima donna who does not know who butter's his bread. The programme is Alban Berg and Mozart.

The Capucins Monastery and the Salzach river.

Swans on the Salzach river.

We had lunch at Café Bazar, always good, we also met many of the orchestra musicians who had come for a bite to eat.

Opening night

This Evening we went to the opening of the Whitsun Festival in Salzburg at the Haus fur Mozart one of the 3 halls in the Festival complex the other known hall the Felsenreitschule that appears in the movie the Sound of Music, it is all carved in the rock face of the mountain. The hall we were in is an addition. The opening work this year is an opera by Mozart, he composed at the age of 15 on a libretto by Pietro Metastasio (1698-1782), it is the story of Judith and Olofrenes. Story taken from the old Testament which tells how the widow Judith saved the Jewish people by killing the leader of the Assyrians, Olofrenes. It is a theme in classical painting that comes back all the time, Judith is seen using Olofrenes's sword to chop his head off while he is sleeping. She is the hand of God liberating his people (the Jews) from the oppressor, in this case the Assyrians or Persians. It is a story of Faith, Love and Hope and of the conversion of the Amonite Prince Achior to Judaism when he sees a defenseless woman win alone against a mighty foe with the help of the one true God.

Beautiful score which shows that Mozart as a child was a musical genius, Maestro Riccardo Muti, (my favorite conductor) did a superb job as always with his orchestra. The theme of this opera was very well received by the Austrian Emperor who saw in this score of the deliverance of the Jewish people an allegory to the liberation of Vienna from the Turkish menace in 1683. Faith in God the All mighty frees his people, the Turks being savages and godless barbarians. In the Felsenreitschule the Karl Böhm hall which use to be the setting for jousting matches and is now use for receptions, on its ceiling a large fresco of a match where Christian Princes are watching galant knights behead rather stylishly Turkish prisoners.

The audience is composed at the Festival of regulars, same people each year really, mostly Europeans and a lot of wealthy Japanese who appear to be guests of the official sponsor the watchmaker A.Lange & Sohne of Dresden, Germany (www.lange-sohne.de)