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.

Morning concert & a Walk in Salzburg

This morning we had another morning concert at 11 am at the Mozarteum, this time we heard Thomas Quasthoff, bass-baritone and the Freiburger Barockorchester with Gottfried Von der Goltz. The program was a mix of Haydn, Mozart, Franz Ignaz Beck and Carl Ditters von Dittersdorf. The Mozarteum is alongside the gardens of the Mirabell Palace, just 2 minutes on foot from our Hotel.

Mozarteum concert hall stage.

Thomas Quasthoff is 51 years old and he was a thalidomide baby, this terrible handicap does not prevent him from having the most wonderful clear, strong voice, beautiful diction and an enormous feeling for the music he sings. His eyes shine as he sings, you can see that he has a deep understanding of the emotions in the text and he knows how to transmit this message to the listening public. I had never heard him before today but I was impressed immediately with his voice and presentation. He is one singer who does not leave you indifferent. He also sings Jazz and modern, he has a good repertoire all around.
What a wonderful gift to have such a voice.

Monsieur looking at the program this morning before the concert in the Mozarteum.

Last night we went to the Grosses FestspielHaus, which was built in the 1960's for Herbert Von Karajan. The conductor was announced at the last moment, replacing a ailing Nikolaus Harnoncourt as
Herbert Blomstedt, a Swedish American maestro who started his career in 1954, so not a young man but a very gifted conductor in the grand manner.  The violinist also stepping in at the last moment was Christian Tetzlaff, he played from memory Alban Berg's Violin concerto To the Memory of an Angel, composed by Berg in memory of Manon Gropius, who died tragically at 18, she was the daughter of architect Walter Gropius. A very difficult modern piece, I was impressed with the talent of Tetzlaff, a young man who simply played beautifully and with such expression and depth of feeling.

To continue our journey today, Thursday, after the concert we went walking around this side of the river, where our hotel is located, first stop Schubert for men, on Dreifaltigkeit gasse 8, bought more clothes, see www.schubert-hemden.com. Then we went to a little café-tea shop, for a bite of lunch on Linzer Gasse. The waiter spoke German, English and Italian, very nice service. We continued on and visited the cemetery of St-Sebastian Church where most of the Mozart family is buried, including Constanza and her second husband Nissen, you can also see the tomb of the Christian Doppler family, (physicist) and Bishop Wolf Dietrich.  Amongst some of the famous people who lived in this small town at one point, not to forget that until 1950 Salzburg only had a population of about 50,000 people, today the population is 140,000, most of this growth happened in the last 25 years.  By the way today is Wolfgang A. birthday so I suppose it was fitting that we went to see his family's graves.

The Mozart family second home on Makart square across from our hotel. They lived in one apartment on the second floor, Leopold Mozart died in that house and his son Wolfgang A. lived there until he moved to Vienna. On the other side of the river just 3 minutes away by foot is the birth house where Wolfgang A. was born and the house where his sister Nannerl lived on University Platz.

We then walked back and across the Staats bridge to the University Church or College Church, which has been undergoing a lot of renovations since 2005.  The roof and the delicate plaster work inside around the main Altar had to be saved from collapsed after years of neglect. As donations continue, the renovation program will continue, much remains to be done. This is one of the most beautiful Churches of the baroque age in Europe.

The steeple of St-Sebastian Church on Linzer gasse.

The beautiful walled cemetery of St-Sebastian Church where most of the Mozart family are buried. Wolfgang A. died in Vienna and his buried there in an unmarked grave.

We then went to Demmel for a pastry and tea, Demmel of Vienna use to be supplier of cakes and pastries to the Royal and Imperial Court (K+K), the family sold the business in 1972 and it is now in the hands of a large restaurateur in Austria, its still nice. Finally we returned to the hotel, Salzburg has quiet streets, they are old narrow streets with no car traffic, only pedestrian. So it is perfect for walking and looking around.