Salzburg hits 96% attendance
NewsThe festival has turned in a dazzling result for this summer – a near-record attendance and 31.1 million euros at the box-office.
The alltime record attendance is 97%.
‘This summer has also shown in the most beautiful way that nuances are possible in art, that it is art that contributes to the refinement of thinking,’ said artistic director Markus Hinterhäuser (pic), more than a little elliptically.
Most people do not go to Salzburg for philosophy.
96 % of attendance sounds to me like Hinterhäuser has done his job properly.
“This summer has also shown in the most beautiful way that nuances are possible in art, that it is art that contributes to the refinement of thinking”
Either a poor Google Translation or poor English or just plain vapid. Artistic Directors should let the performances speak for themselves. We don’t need ‘splainin after the fact.
Will this quiet the doomsayers at all who love to proclaim that classical music is dead? Doubt it.
No, just proves that some still have the money and spending power, the appropriate clothes to wear at such occasions, want to be seen, and so can afford to go – as I found out from some of my own family there and my being a student at tge Mozarteum. After all, it is Salzburg, not the fine BBC Proms at upwards of £8 a ticket, and wear your jeans and red wig if you want!
I was there for nine performances in ten days (Pollini has cancelled). The level was in general very high. As always, we had the very good (Grigorian in Suor Angelica, the Aida singers, Levit, Corinne Winters in Kata Kabanova, the Salonen concert) and the less good (the Barenboim and the first Petrenko concerts, for different reasons) with the Zauberflöte in the middle. The only mediocre evening was the one conducted by Saraste (how can you be so boring in Sibelius second.
?). But only in Salzburg can you hear the VPO and the BPO in the same day… Worth the trip.
How can one be in literally everything so boring like Saraste?
Because Blomstedt, who was due to conduct the concert, cancelled.
Salzburg kept going even in 2020…! How to keep your audiences… chapeau.
How do you know why people go? Have you asked them?
Went to seven concerts in five days. Really enjoyed five and two were mediocre. I’ll be back again next year.
Well done to the organisers. 96 percent speaks for itself. As I noted on another article, every single show I attended was sold out.
Show……
What IS your problem, sir, with the festival in Salzburg, and the erudite Mr. Hinterhaeuser – who can count me as one of those who appreciates his thinking and his wit and irony (at their annual programme roll-out, for example). With a good translation I’m sure he’d be somewhat less eliptical for you.
And what’s wrong with the Salzburg approach to programming? It has worked for decades and successfully differentiates the product in a multi-million-dollar marketplace: Summer Festivals. And part of that mix, for those who want it, and there are more than a few, is the philosophy of the festival founders, the linkage to the local countryside and history, and the intellectual or philosophical positioning, framing or set-up of each summer’s events.
No need for cheap shots based on partial information when there are more deserving targets.
Kind regards.