Salzburg Festival: who was missing on the concert poster this year

The concert schedule of the Salzburg Festival this year is rich not only in events, but also in substitutions. How much they influence the disputes around the figure of the intendant of the festival Markus Hinterhäuser, found out Alexey Mokrousov.

It seems that at the age of 82 one cannot conduct with the same energy as in youth. But for good conductors, Richard Strauss used to say, all their energy goes into rehearsals, where the main work is done, and the concert is just a presentation of what has already been done. Two evenings of the orchestra Le Concert des Nations at the Salzburg Festival once again confirmed this. 82-year-old Jordi Savall – he celebrated his birthday just during the festival – conducted Beethoven’s symphonies without the usual brilliance and thunder, but as if listening to his contemporaries of the composer. The concertos, which included the Third, Fifth, Sixth and Seventh symphonies, can in a sense be called working, everyday – Beethoven is here the heir and successor, the doer, and not the herald. Haydn and the late Mozart are interlocutors for Saval, not monuments; the authenticist’s own experience affects the sound. In the Funeral March of the Heroic Symphony, the oboe solo is performed, for example, by the famous master of baroque music Paolo Grazzi – so the human drama unfolds simultaneously as part of the world musical landscape, forgetting nothing of musical history.

Although the pandemic seems to have gone down in history, the replacements of musicians still have not gone away. The concert program of Salzburg is full of last-minute substitutions as never before – all of them are annoying, others are offensive, but none of them looks fatal. At first, Franz Welser-Möst, due to illness, could not conduct Macbeth, he was successfully replaced by Philippe Jordan. Welser-Möst was going to recover for concerts with the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra, but he could not, at the last minute Daniel Harding came to the rescue. Markus Hinterhäuser also left the project with Matthias Görne, which united Mahler and Shostakovich, for health reasons – the previous performances of the pianist and baritone always turned out to be events. Now the matter ended with the replacement of the program: Görne performed Schubert’s songs – psychologically verified, musically impeccable. He was accompanied by his constant “co-author” Alexander Schmalz, who also performed with the legendary Peter Schreyer and Edita Gruberova. Schmalz is not just a connoisseur of Schubert, at the request of the same Görne, he makes arrangements of songs for the orchestra – they are performed, for example, by the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra

Then Igor Levit replaced Martha Argerich in a concert with Daniel Barenboim and, like Goerne with Schmalz, delighted the audience and critics. The festival director Markus Hinterhäuser is in charge of compiling the concert programs himself; the perfect sale of tickets this summer proves that the public appreciates his choice. Criticism is another matter: more and more often Hinterhäuser is under fire of accusations that are repeated almost without variation, but look strange not only for this reason.

More than others, the neighbors are irritated by the Salzburg quartermaster – the German press. But no one connects this with the new president of the festival, the German Christina Hammer, the upcoming election of a new artistic director in the indefinite future, or events such as falling sales in nearby Bayreuth.

A political accent also appeared in the controversy around the festival – right-wing populists entered the government of Salzburg, one of the actors demanded a public commentary, moreover, during the opening ceremony.

Hinterhäuser logically refused such demonstrations, offering to make art on the stage, and not battles in words – this caused a nervous reaction and suspicion of the instability of the festival ship as a whole.

Hinterhäuser is reproached for working with a limited number of opera directors – Krzysztof Warlikowski, Simon Stone and Martin Kuschey, not to mention Christoph Marthaler, and indeed this is not the first time they have worked in Salzburg. But the circle of directors in the opera is limited, and attempts to involve colleagues from the drama theater are not always successful; on the other hand, it is difficult to find a profession more specific than an opera director, and it is absurd to expect revolutionary upheavals or even bright finds every season.

Other claims concern Russia in general and Teodor Currentzis in particular. There are many Russian performers at the festival, but what to do if the pianistic school has always been outstanding, and the singers are also not deprived of their voices? Since last spring, many have been asked to make public statements; as a result, neither Valery Gergiev nor Anna Netrebko is at the festival this year, but Currentzis with his new orchestra and the Utopia choir is still on the bill. Concert performances of Purcell’s Indian Queen, with Peter Sellars’ limited but impressive direction, were played to packed houses and ended with standing ovations. Reviewers, however, prefer to discuss the extent to which Currentzis is distancing himself from the Russian authorities, the financing of his St. Petersburg orchestra by VTB, and why Hinterhäuser, unlike other European commissaries, continues to cooperate with him.

No one wonders why Currentzis has been successfully directing the SWR orchestra in Karlsruhe for the fifth year and receiving a salary from the German state. Many well-known conductors and soloists perform with the orchestra, from Pablo Eras-Casado to Ingo Metzmacher, so there is no need to talk about rejection by colleagues.

Three previous quartermasters of Salzburg – Peter Ruzicka, Jurgen Flimm and Alexander Pereira – left ahead of schedule. Everyone had their own reasons, but in general, the difficulties of managing the richest festival in the world are understandable: there are many who want to, but only a few who can carry the load for a long time. When they try to mix ideology into art where it is not needed, there comes an awkward pause. The good thing is that there is always music to fill it.