Mozart Matinees • Mozarteum Orchestra Salzburg

For decades, the Mozart Matinees on the Festival weekends have been a legend. The summer of 2013 presents a high-carat selection of conductors and soloists in seven carefully chosen matinee programmes, illuminating Mozart’s relations with the two other representatives of the Viennese Classical School – Haydn and Beethoven –, but also creating a contemporary dialogue between Mozart and composers of our times. The programmes reflect the dramaturgical goals of the Festival’s overall concert programming. The two first Matinees, conducted by Thomas Hengelbrock and Adam Fischer, will form part of the Ouverture spirituelle. Jörg Widman features as the soloist in Mozart’s late Clarinet Concerto. Thomas Hengelbrock will juxtapose Mozart’s Requiem with Takemitsu’s Requiem for Strings, thereby also making a first major contribution to this year’s focus on Japan in the series Salzburg contemporary. Ingo Metzmacher presents a fascinating encounter, combining Mozart’s Deutsche Tänze, Stravinsky’s Danses concertantes and Charles Ives’ Ragtime Dances. Rudolf Buchbinder will perform the Piano Concertos K. 482 and 488, for which Mozart called for clarinets in the orchestra, and the first Concerto composed by Mozart in a minor key, K. 466, as a primus inter pares, leading the Mozarteum Orchestra from the piano. Under John Eliot Gardiner’s baton, Handel’s oratorio Das Alexander-Fest will be performed – an ode to St Cecilia, patron saint of church music – in Mozart’s orchestration. The programme of the last Matinee is closely linked to the Festival’s history, being dedicated to the composer Gerhard Wimberger – a long-time member of the Salzburg Festival’s directorate – on the occasion of his 90^th birthday: Hans Graf conducts the world premiere of Wimberger’s Passion Giordano Bruno for bass-baritone, narrator, mixed chorus and orchestra, and Peter Simonischek takes on the role of the narrator.