Notes from the 2024 Salzburg Festival ( 2 ) Ouverture Spirituelle • Te Deum & Mozart Matinee

Te Deum — La Capella Reial • Le Concert des Nations • Savall

Also reviewed for Die Presse: Strahlende Trauermusik mit Jordi Savall und Adám Fischer

ALL PICTURES (DETAILS) COURTESY SALZBURG FESTIVAL, © Marco Borrelli. CLICK FOR THE WHOLE PICTURE.

Evening and Mourning: De Profundis for Wolfgang Rihm

No one knew Friday evening, when Jordi Savall performed Michel-Richard Delalande’s (and Arvo Pärt’s) De Profundis. And When Adám Fischer conducted Mozart’s Masonic Funeral Music at the Saturday Mozart Matinee, news had just reached Salzburg that Wolfgang Rihm had died that night. In retrospect, those two concerts took on the character of a musical leave-taking from arguably the most respected living German composer and a dear human being.

Charpentier Te Deum Ensemble Les Surprises Alpha, 2024

The sun was just laying last bands of warm yellows across the battlements, church towers, and roofs of Salzburg when the sounds of early French baroque filled the Collegiate Church, courtesy of Le Concert des Nations and Jordi Savall, who made his way to stage with a crutch and his face that looks like an apostle carved from wood. The center of this Tootsie Pop, between Delalande and the timeless minimalism of Pärt, was Marc-Antoine Charpentier’s grand Te Deum, which Europeans of a certain age invariably associate with childhood moments in front of the TV, maybe for the Four Hills ski jumping tournament or the Eurovision Song Contest, seeing that the opening prelude is the signal of the “Eurovision” pan-European broadcasts. Only that that version is rather more stately than the tempestuous trumpets and snappy timpani were, that Savall & Co. hurled at the enthused audience – eliciting early Bravos after the “In te, Domine, speravi” faded away into the generous acoustic of the ideally suited (and carefully prepared) church space.

Throughout the evening, the young La Capella Reial de Catalunya choir radiated with musical joy, like a big family in a choral outing. The soloists from its own ranks pleased with fresh and clear interpretations – above all the positively glowing (it may partly have been the advanced state of pregnancy) soprano of Elionor Martínez. Mezzo Kristin Mulders added her incisive, blazing instrument into the mix, although the tight, pronounced vibrato did not quite gel with the other, purer voices.

The short encore, Pärt’s Da pacem Domine (written for Savall and inspired by the 2004 Madrid train bombings), opened like a Gregorian chorale before the typical Pärt-isms chimed in: The chords that drift apart, the shifting long vocal lines, the regular time signature of the timpani, all resting on a subtle, almost unnoticeable bed of gently buzzing strings.

Funereal and Rocking Mozart from A.Fischer

W.A.Mozart 45 Symphonies Danish National CO Dacapo, 2013

Mozart’s Masonic Funeral Music, which Adám Fischer and the Mozarteum Orchestra performed, is not his best work – but it’s one of the more distinct ones in his output. The earthy, dark, woodwind-centered piece made for a most memorable curtain raiser, followed by a far less memorable D-minor Piano Concerto (K.466) in which the young Lukas Sternath, who won just about every prize at the 2022 ARD Music Competition, played flawless and lovely enough (“achingly sincere” is Tim Page’s suggestion for a put-down on such an occasion), but never achieved lift-off.

As if to prove that neither orchestra nor the conductor were to blame, Fischer and the Salzburgers went for a zany “Linz” Symphony that sparkled and crackled from start to end. With a smile across its collective face, the Mozarteum Orchestra delivered drive instead of legato, short but never choppy phrasing, and their joy transferred unto the audience’s – reminding us, why it is Adám Fischer, who currently has the best Mozart Symphony Cycle to his name.

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Photo descriptions:

Picture No.1: Te Deum – La Capella Reial · Le Concert des Nations · Savall 2024: Jordi Savall (Dirigent), Le Concert des Nations, Solisten

Picture No.2: Mozart-Matinee · A. Fischer 2024: Adam Fischer (Dirigent), Mozarteumorchester Salzburg