• Day 1
• Day 2
• Day 3
• Day 4
• Day 5
• Day 6
• Day 7
• Day 8

Day 1, Friday 17th August

Travelling to Passau

Flights from the UK. We are offering a choice of three scheduled Lufthansa flights to Munich, from Manchester or London. It may be possible to arrange connecting flights with bmi (British Midland) from Edinburgh, Glasgow, Aberdeen or Belfast; please enquire.

Please choose one flight option only. If you choose flight Option 1 for the outbound flight from London Heathrow to Munich, you also return to London on the Option 1 flight. If you choose flight Option 2, you return on the Option 2 flight, and so on.

Option 1: Fly from London Heathrow to Munich at 9.30am.
Break the journey to Passau with lunch at Landshut, a former capital of Bavaria. There are two hours here, and it should be possible to see the main street with its Renaissance and Baroque house fronts, the great Gothic church of St Martin or the precociously Italianate Renaissance ducal palace. (LH 2471, departing London 9.30am, arriving Munich 12.20pm.)

Option 2: Fly from London Heathrow to Munich at 11.05am.
Drive directly from Munich Airport to the ship at Passau, a journey of under two hours. (LH 2473, departing London 11.05am, arriving Munich 1.55pm.)

Option 3: Fly from Manchester to Munich at 11.00am.
Drive from Munich Airport to the ship at Passau, a journey of under two hours. (LH 2501, departing Manchester 11.00am, arriving Munich 1.55pm.)

Option 4 (‘No flights’): Making your own arrangements.
You can choose not to take any of these flights and to make your own arrangements for joining at Passau, boarding the ship between 4.00pm and 6.00pm. You are welcome to join one of the group transfers from Munich Airport. There is a price reduction for this no-flights option of £160 per person.

The ship, MS Amadeus Elegant, is ready for boarding from 4.00pm. Afternoon tea is available.

Piled up on promontories at the confluence of three rivers, the Bavarian city of Passau is dominated by a great Baroque cathedral and crammed with unspoilt streetscape and historic buildings. It was one of the most important episcopal seats in Central Europe and served as a refuge for the Habsburg court in times of danger.
After sailing at c. 6.30pm there are introductory talks, a reception and dinner.


Day 2, Saturday 18th August

Grein, Melk, Dürnstein
Moor at Grein, a picturesque little town squeezed between the Danube and the hills with a 16th-century Schloss rising to one side. It is a short walk from the ship to the main square where the tiny municipal theatre lies hidden within the town hall. Constructed in 1791 – the year the Magic Flute was composed – it is the oldest working theatre in Austria.

Grein, Stadttheater
Michael Collins (clarinet), Heath Quartet
Mozart and Brahms Quintets

Michael Collins is one of today’s most sought-after soloists. At sixteen he won the woodwind section of the first ever BBC Young Musician of the Year Award and went on to become one of the world’s leading clarinettists. He is also a noted conductor, recently appointed as Principal Conductor of the City of London Sinfonia. His extensive discography has also won him many awards.

Founded in 2002 at the Royal Northern College of Music, the Heath Quartet was selected for representation by YCAT (Young Classical Artist Trust) in 2008, and has gone on to win several international awards and to be granted a Borletti-Buitoni Special Ensemble Scholarship. The Quartet has undertaken two complete Beethoven cycles, and their increasingly busy schedule is now taking them to all the major concert halls. They are currently Senior Chamber Music Fellows at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama.

The concert includes Mozart’s Clarinet Quintet in A (K581) and Brahms’ Clarinet Quintet in B minor, Op.115.

Sail downstream after the concert and moor at Melk. Dramatically situated on an outcrop rising above the Danube, Melk Abbey is one of the most brilliant creations of the Age of Baroque. A sequence comprising ceremonial courts, guest apartments, hall and library culminates in a church of unsurpassed decorative richness. The concert here (one hour, no interval) takes place in the Kolomanisaal, a hall – once the summer refectory – not normally accessible to visitors, which has frescoes by Paul Troger (1744).

Melk Abbey, Kolomanisaal
Stile Antico
Vocal music for Maximillian I, Holy Roman Emperor

Stile Antico is an ensemble of young British singers now established as one of the most exciting and original new voices in its field. Working without a conductor, the members of the group each contribute artistically to the musical result, with stunning effect. They tour throughout the world with Renaissance Tudor, Flemish and Spanish music. Their recent release Song of Songs won the 2009 Gramophone Award for Early Music and reached the top of the US Classical Chart.

Like any self-respecting Renaissance monarch, Maximillian equipped his court with a ‘chapel’ of some of the finest musicians of the day. Foremost among these was the court composer, Heinrich Isaac, celebrated as second only to the great Josquin des Prez. The music in this programme showcases motets written for Maximillian’s Habsburg court by Isaac and his contemporaries.

Return to the ship and sail downstream through the Wachau, one of the most beautiful stretches of the Danube. Moor at Dürnstein, perhaps the loveliest little town on the river. The ruins of a castle in which Richard the Lionheart was imprisoned rise on a steep hill behind, while a Baroque church is perched above the waterfront. Disembark for a late evening concert, again with Stile Antico.

Dürnstein Abbey, Church
Stile Antico
Anglican and Recusant Compline

The Divine Office is the most spiritually charged musical tradition to have emerged from western civilization, and has in essentials changed little in nearly fifteen hundred years. The last of the eight Canonical Hours is performed this evening, featuring largely English composers such as Tallis, Byrd and Sheppard. The programme also features the singing of the votive antiphon of the Blessed Virgin Mary.
Sail overnight from Dürnstein to Vienna-Nussdorf.


Day 3, Sunday 19th August

Vienna

Principal seat of the Habsburgs for over six hundred years, Vienna became capital of a vast agglomeration of territories that encompassed much of Central and Eastern Europe. A glorious mix of great and small, of the imperiously magnificent and the charmingly unpretentious, the city is one of the world’s greatest centres of art, architecture and music.

Albertina, Hall of the Muses
Christiane Karg soprano
Burkhard Kehring piano
Songs of Night and Dreams

This is a privileged opportunity to hear Christiane Karg, a young Bavarian soprano who has already conquered European audiences and is set to make a huge impression when she performs at Wigmore Hall. Her first Lieder recording, also partnered by Burkhard Kehring, won the prestigious Echo Klassik Award, and in 2009 the magazine Opernwelt named her as Young Performer of the Year.  

Burkhard Kehring has performed in most of the world’s major concert halls and music festivals. He has been official accompanist at master classes with such artists as Elisabeth Schwarzkopf, Marilyn Horne and Hermann Prey, and works regularly with distinguished singers, including Robert Holl, Júlia Várady, Andreas Schmidt and Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau.

The Albertina, which houses one of the world’s greatest collections of prints and drawings, is a town palace with beautiful interiors of the 1820s – contemporary, therefore, with Schubert songs, including Nacht und Träume. This theme continues within songs by Wolf, Brahms and Strauss.
Moor overnight at Vienna-Nussdorf.


Day 4, Monday 20th August

Bratislava

Sail during the morning to Bratislava (Pressburg in German, Pozony in Hungarian). Now capital of Slovakia, it was capital of the Habsburg rump of Hungary for three hundred years, both during and after the Turkish occupation. Its historic centre is one of the most attractive along the Danube, a network of unspoilt streets, squares and beautifully restored buildings.

Bratislava, Primatial Palace
Vienna Piano Trio
Czech Piano Trios

Garlanded with awards, the Vienna Piano Trio has been delighting audiences worldwide for over 20 years. The Trio is already a favourite with Martin Randall regulars, having appeared at many MRT Music Festivals as well as Music at the Castle weekends. It is also often heard at Wigmore Hall and holds a Residency there in the 2011–2012 season. The Trio is unquestionably one of the most widely respected chamber groups currently performing, and appears in every major concert hall and at all the significant international festivals.

Today’s concert celebrates the Slavic ingredient of the Austro-Hungarian empire, with Dvořák’s Piano Trio No.3 in F Minor among other works. The venue is the Mirror Hall of the 18th-century residence of the Archbishops of Hungary, the grandest of Bratislava’s palaces.

Moor overnight at Bratislava.

Day 5, Tuesday 21st August

Fertöd

Drive from Slovakia into Hungary and to Eszterháza, summer residence of Prince Nikolaus of Esterházy and hence Joseph Haydn’s principal place of work for nearly thirty years. Perhaps the most spectacularly beautiful country house in Central Europe, this late-Rococo, early-Neoclassical confection is gradually being restored to its former glory. Lunch is provided here under a grove of horse-chestnuts (there is a wet-weather alternative).

Eszterháza Palace, Ceremonial Hall
Esterházy Ensemble
Baryton Trios

The Esterházy Ensemble, directed by Michael Brüssing, specialises in music for the baryton and viola da gamba, and is particularly associated with the Haydn baryton trios so beloved of Prince Nikolaus Esterházy, himself a keen player of the instrument. Their recording of every one of these trios written by Haydn was completed in 2009, to widespread acclaim. 

The baryton (viola di bordone) is an exotic stringed instrument rather like a bass viol with the addition of sympathetic strings. Rare even in the eighteenth century, it became an obsession of Prince Nikolaus Esterházy, who demanded a regular supply of music for the instrument. Haydn duly obliged with duos, divertimenti, concertos and no fewer than 126 trios.

The recital takes place in the principal hall of the palace, which is a delight - white and gold, classicism on holiday. Seating fewer than a hundred, the audience splits and the hour-long concert is performed twice.

Sail overnight from Bratislava to Tulln (Austria).  


Day 6, Wednesday 22nd August

Atzenbrugg, Dürnstein

Disembark at Tulln and drive to the village of Atzenbrugg. Here is a modest manor house once tenanted by the uncle of one of Schubert’s circle, Franz von Schober, whither Schubert came with friends in the early 1820s. Entertainments were contrived which came to be known as ‘Schubertiades’ – music was played, songs sung, poems read, drinks drunk, jolly japes perpetrated. 

Schloss Atzenbrugg
Henk Neven baritone
Hans Eijsackers piano
Schubert Songs

Henk Neven won the Fortis MeesPierson Award in 2008, joined the Radio 3 New Generation Artists Scheme in 2009 and won the Dutch Music Prize, the Netherlands’ highest honour for a classical musician, in 2011. He has a busy career in opera houses and concert halls throughout Europe.

Also Dutch, Hans Eijsackers was born in 1967 and won many prizes at an early age. He performs as a soloist, accompanist and chamber musician, and is a piano professor at both the Academy of Utrecht and the Royal Conservatory of The Hague.
Wood-framed, Viennese and dating to 1864, the piano at Schloss Atzenbrugg produces a sound with which Schubert would have been familiar. The hall seats fewer than a hundred, so the audience splits and the hour-long recital is performed twice.
After the concert, sail upstream to Dürnstein once more, where the ship moors in the late afternoon.

Dürnstein Abbey, Prälatensaal
Alina Ibragimova violin
Bach Suites & Partitas

Alina Ibragimova was born in Russia and moved to England in 1996 when her father became principal double bass with the London Symphony Orchestra. She attended the Yehudi Menuhin School and began winning awards and plaudits at a very early age. She is now regarded as one of the most prodigiously gifted artists of her generation and has a flourishing international career. 

The venue is the principal reception room in the abbey, perfect in size and shape for a recital of solo violin, handsomely decorated with Neoclassical frescoes.
Sail overnight from Dürnstein to Linz.

Day 7, Thursday 23rd August

Linz

Moor in the morning at Linz, capital of Upper Austria. Around the huge market square, which is only yards away from the mooring, lies a picturesque maze of streets, passages and historic buildings. There is time to explore the city and its museums.   

Palais Kaufmännischer Verein, Picture Hall
Scottish Ensemble
Jonathan Morton Artistic Director
Austro-Hungarian Finale

The Scottish Ensemble is a renowned string ensemble formed from some of the best string players in Europe, led from the violin by Artistic Director Jonathan Morton. Based in Glasgow, the Ensemble plays internationally and in recent years tours have included China, Germany and France, while in Scotland they have an annual 30-concert series.

The final programme is a medley of string pieces from the Austro-Hungarian Empire: Mozart’s Divertimento in F (K138), Dvořák’s Notturno and Serenade, JanáČek’s Kreutzer, and Bruckner’s Adagio (he spent much of his life in Linz).

The concert is held in the Palais Kaufmännischer Verein, which has a suite of lavishly decorated halls built in the 1890s for assorted gatherings and celebrations. The ‘Picture Hall’ is a fin-de-siècle creation smeared with gilded neo-Baroque motifs and ennobled with fine history paintings.

Sail upstream from Linz to Passau, with a reception and dinner against a backdrop of river and wooded hills.


Day 8, Friday 24th August

Passau, Munich

The ship moors at Passau and coaches leave for Munich city centre and the airport between 8.30 and 9.30am.

Option 1. Those who flew from Heathrow at 9.30am join a return flight (LH 2476) which is scheduled to arrive into London Heathrow at 2.20pm. Coaches take you directly from Passau to Munich Airport.

Option 2. Those who flew from Heathrow at 11.00am join a return flight (LH 2480) which is scheduled to arrive into London Heathrow at 7.20pm. Coaches take you first to the centre of Munich, where you have about four hours of free time, before continuing to the airport.

Option 3. Those flying to Manchester have two hours in the centre of Munich before being taken to the airport. The flight (LH 2502) is due to arrive into Manchester International airport at 4.45pm.

Option 4. Those who have made their own flight arrangements are welcome to join one of the transfers to Munich or the airport.

Pre-festival tour. Those who flew out with Salzburg Summer join the Option 1 return flight (please see above).

• Ship details

• Prices

• How Strenuous?

• The Festival Directors

• The Speakers

• More information