Salzburg Festival Blog 4 (26 July)

A beautiful day and a free one. A rare combination so far this Salzburg summer. I lunch with family at the terrific Gasthof Schloss Aigen. Many of the customers were at last night’s premiere  and were complimentary about the performance.

In the evening Tess and I attend  Harnoncourt’s concert with the Vienna Philharmonic. A gentle first-half of Schubert’s waltzes arranged by Webern and Josef Strauss Waltzes (this felt like a very odd combination and confused the public somewhat-certainly insofar as to when to applaud!) was followed by Harnoncourt’s intense and searching reading of Schubert’s great C major Symphony. The opening Horn solo sounding almost gregorian chant -like in his rhetorically free reading.  The final diminuendo on the last unison note of the piece was as effectively done as I have ever heard it.