Operas, orchestral, choral and chamber concerts – these are the formats for which the audience Salzburg Easter Festival knows and loves. But love is one thing: it needs to be kept fresh so that it can continue to feel sparkling and seductive.
Nikolaus Bachler – since this year the sole artistic director of this “little sister” of the big Salzburg Festival in the summer – has therefore given her a fresh cell cure. Above all, this consists of more diversity: in the program, in the audience, in the formats. He calls this a “realignment” of the traditional festival (which goes back to 1967 and its founding father Herbert von Karajan).
The regular orchestra (the Sächsische Staatskapelle Dresden) and conductor (Christian Thielemann, who was also the artistic director of the festival) are gone, and there will be a change every year up to and including 2025. In 2026, the Berlin Philharmonic (with Kirill Petrenko conducting) will return to the Salzach as the permanent resident orchestra, where they played under Karajan and established the reputation of the festival.
But as I said, Bachler wants more. With contemporary dance and electro beats he wants to attract a wider audience and also calls for significantly lower prices. It will be even cheaper for the U27 age group. For this he brings the French-Israeli choreographer Emanuel Gat to Salzburg, who will premiere the piece “Träume”, inspired by Richard Wagner’s Wesendonck-Lieder and his revolution writing, in a brilliant dance spectacle on the stage of the Felsenreitschule (6th and 7th April).
“Westbam meets Wagner” is the name of the late night with DJ Westbam and members of the Mendelssohn Orchestra Academy of the Gewandhaus Orchestra conducted by Oscar Jockel (here at the rehearsal in Leipzig).
(Photo: Tom Thiele)
And for a “Night of Love” he invited Maximilian Lenz, better known as DJ Westbam, to the Felsenreitschule. “Westbam meets Wagner” at the analog-electronic late-night show on April 6th, which starts at 10 p.m. Lenz aka Westbam says: “I’m interested in the futuristic Wagner, the thinker of the work of art of the future, the detonating steam ram Wagner at the entrance to the steel thunderstorm”. Conductor Oscar Jockel and the members of the Mendelssohn Orchestra Academy of the Gewandhaus Orchestra will have to be careful that the “Night of Love” doesn’t fall under the “steamer” of the electronic pioneer.