Festival is saved by making use of its park

Festival is saved by making use of its park

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norman lebrecht

May 14, 2020

The Grafenegg Festival will take place in August across its 32-acre castle park, it as decided last night after meetings with government and broadcast officials in Vienna.

We have fantastic orchestras in Austria. And there are many conductors and soloists who live in Austria,’ says artistic director Rudolf  Buchbinder. We have to set signals and we can do that in Grafenegg thanks to the open-air stage.’

No further details have been given.

One concert series has been named ‘We are playing for Austria.

More here.

Comments

  • John Rook says:

    Good for them. Go, Austria.

  • Julien says:

    At last some good news ! And there is hope for Salzburg then.

    • Saxon Broken says:

      The Salzburg festival takes place in a traditional concert hall in an enclosed space. It might be a little early for them this summer.

  • V.Lind says:

    Any reason why UK operations could not use stadia? They are not exactly inundated with football, and anyway are often used by rock groups. (They should be able to get something going — they are smaller than orchestras and opera companies and could easily distance on stage).

    And stadium grounds would be easier to monitor than open parks in terms of limiting, and therefore isolating, audiences.

    Forget concession stands. The lavatory arrangements remain problematic. But much less so than in theatres.

    • SVM says:

      Nice idea, but only if the performers could project effectively *without* amplification. So, the question is, are there any stadia large enough to enable adequate social distancing but small enough to be within the lung-power/string-power/hammer-power (no point mentioning quill-power, since there is no way a harpsichord could fill any football stadium) of classical musicians?

      • V.Lind says:

        The same way as in a pubic park. I’m just looking at stadia as parks that already have stages in them (or are set u to easily put stages in, unlike some park spaces).

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