Salzburg Festival Blog 32 (26 Aug)
Feeling tired after the exertions of last night and the weakness resulting from the stomach bug, I get up late, around 9am and take breakfast in the garden in Aigen. On such a day, the view of the nearby Gaisberg is uplifting. It’s always inspiring even in torrential rain or swirling fog. Salzburg awakes all the emotions. I cycle to the local supermarket and bump into Clemens Hagen (cellist of the superlative Hagen Quartet) who is in fact a neighbour in Aigen. (As indeed are many musicians).
His playing of the Schumann Concerto earlier in this Festival was by all accounts masterly. For me, he plays the Haydn C major Concerto as well as any living cellist, he did so with MOS a few years back, inserting Georg Friedrich Haas’s astounding cadenza. Lunch is with Matthias Schulz – from the Concerts department on the Festival and we discuss programmes and artists for the next Festival’s Mozart Matinees. It’s been practically sorted for some time now, but there are still some loose ends.
In the evening, the Young Singers Project final concert is enthusiastically received and at the post concert party (this year more of an internal affair than last year’s celebrity-driven jamboree) there is a palpable sense of huge talent on the threshold of significant (and in some cases outstanding) careers. Lots of emotional farewells as this chapter in their lives draws to a close and flights to Russia, Australia, USA, Ukraine, Poland, Switzerland and Argentina beckon.