Simone Young flak gets a Japan jump-in

Here’s a happy holiday story.

The young Austrian conductor Felix Hornbacher, assistant to Simone Young, received an emergency call from Japan. The Kawaminami Mozart Music Festival, an event founded by his uncle Balduin Sulzer, had just lost its conductor to the usual winter woes. It needed someone to take over Mozart’s Requiem and some Bruckner Motets this Sunday.

‘But it’s Christmas week,’ cried Felix. ‘I’m down to conduct Midnight service at the famous Sonntagberg Basilika in Lower Austria….’

‘Just 24 hours of your time,’ said the Japanese. ‘We’ll make sure you’re home for Silent Night’.

So Felix is on a flight. First-class, we hope.

Have a good one, one and all.