Spirit of optimism
Klosters Music celebrates its fifth anniversary at the opening concert with soprano Julie Fuchs and the Camerata Salzburg.
The New Year’s Eve celebrations are only a few weeks behind us. As the champagne corks pop and people wish their nearest and dearest a happy new year, they look to the future with joy and confidence. For a few hours, everyday cares and worries are forgotten as a hope-filled new year begins. “Joie de vivre”, pure joie de vivre. And that is also is the name of the opening concert of Klosters Music on 29 July 2023 with the soprano Julie Fuchs and the Camerata Salzburg. This promises a spirit of optimism and great energy, a reason to celebrate.
The singer’s coloraturas are like champagne pearls: sparkling, stimulating, soaring. After the French singer awed the audience at Klosters Music in 2021 with arias by George Frideric Händel and Antonio Vivaldi, she now returns to the festival two years later with a Mozart-Rossini programme. Her new Mozart album “Amadé”, which was produced together with the Balthasar Neumann Ensemble under the direction of Thomas Hengelbrock, has been widely acclaimed by the press. At the opening concert we can look forward to the cheerful aria “Ach ich liebte, war so glücklich” from the opera “Die Entführung aus dem Serail” (The Abduction from the Seraglio) and the weightless solo motet “Exsultate, jubilate”, in which the singer can demonstrate all her technical and musical brilliance. But Gioachino Rossini’s aria “Una voce poco fa” from his successful opera “Il barbiere di Siviglia” is also spectacular. The Frenchwoman, who grew up in Avignon, can relate to the festival theme “Longing for Nature” in Klosters. “When I was a member of the Zurich Opera House ensemble, I fell in love with Switzerland. I loved exploring different regions and performing in various locations in this beautiful country. The opera houses are usually in the big cities, but I like to be outdoors in nature. So I’m very happy to be in such an idyllic setting in the middle of the mountains and to share the music I love with the audience.”
“Search within yourself. Then you will have something to say.”
The splendour of the high mountains is not far away in Salzburg either and just like at the Landquart, you can experience nature in all its glory along the Salzach. The Camerata Salzburg, founded in 1952 by conductor and musicologist Bernhard Paumgartner, has been dedicated to the music of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart from the very beginning. And it has dedicated itself not only to his symphonies, but also to his soloist concertos, for which it has collaborated with such prominent musicians as Clara Haskil, Sir Alfred Brendel and Sir András Schiff. “Making music with individual responsibility and a community spirit” is the credo. The long-time principal conductor Sándor Végh (from 1978 to 1997) coined the phrase: “Search within yourself. Then you will have something to say.” Under Végh, the orchestra was invited to the Salzburg Festival for the first time, where it has long been a regular guest. Today, the outstanding orchestra no longer has a principal conductor, so the musical responsibility lies even more with its members. In Klosters, the Israeli conductor Daniel Cohen leads the orchestra. The general music director of the Staatstheater Darmstadt began his musical career as a violinist in the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra founded by Daniel Barenboim. Cohen has already worked with the Staatskapelle Berlin and the Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra and regularly stands in the orchestra pit in Darmstadt to conduct opera productions. That is why he is just the right person for our opera gala. And we can also look forward to his interpretation of Franz Schubert’s bright Symphony No. 3 in D major, which exudes passion and vibrancy.