Schloss Grafenegg Festival
Music in the Wachau
- Three orchestral concerts and a recital in the grounds of a country house in the Wachau region. Orchestras include the London Baroque Soloists with Sir John Eliot Gardiner and the Orchestre de Paris with Christoph Eschenbach.
- Soloists include Christine Schäfer, Mark Padmore and Piotr Anderszewski.
- Excursions with an art historian.
Situated in the Wachau region only forty miles from Vienna and surrounded by some of the loveliest landscapes in the country, Schloss Grafenegg was until recently an imposing but somewhat neglected Neo-Gothic country mansion. But a massive injection of state funding has turned the complex, which includes a park and a range of outbuildings, into a major arts centre with plenty of ambition. The climax of the year is this festival in late summer under the artistic directorship of Rudolf Buchbinder. The programme this year, only its second season, is certainly extremely alluring.
For many years the former riding school was used for occasional concerts, but now a completely new, much larger and state-of-the art concert hall has been built. However, the audience might not see the inside it: if weather permits, the concerts will be in an outdoor arena, also new. The intention is to combine first-rate performers and facilities with some of the pleasures of nature (one of the dinners will be a picnic in the park).
Our tour is based at an historic hotel about fifteen miles away in Dürnstein, the prettiest little town on the Danube. A cluster of mediaeval, Renaissance and Baroque buildings gathers around an abbey church on the water’s edge, which in this setting is one of the most beautiful architectural sights of eighteenth-century origin. Atop a hill behind are the ruins of a castle in which Richard Lionheart was imprisoned and held to ransom.
There will be excursions in the mornings to places of interest in the vicinity, free time in the afternoons and concerts on four evenings. The accompanying lecturer is an art historian who knows Austria well and has led many tours to this region, and she gives daily talks on art and culture.