Dudamel’s electrifying baton in the temple of Mozart’s music – a tribute to Richard Strauss at the 2014 Salzburg Festival

The Salzburg Festival is one of the greatest European musical events featuring opera, theatre and concerts, bringing the artists’ elite from around the world and enthusiasts of the Mozartian genius’ music to Salzburg, Mozart’s hometown, every summer. Which were the highlights of the 2014 edition?

The new Don Giovanni production, directed by Sven-Eric Bechtolf, starring the bass lldebrando d’Arcangelo, drew the festival’s public like a magnet this summer. As they were expected to, the stars Anna Netrebko and Placido Domingo also shone in a Verdian premiere under the baton of Daniele Gatti, Il Trovatore, an opera whose action is placed by the well-known Latvian conductor Alvis Hermanis in a painting gallery on the Haus für Mozart stage!

A historical moment of the edition and a premiere in the 94-year-long history of the festival was the staging of an opera composed by Franz Schubert, a rarity of the lyrical scene: the romantic opera Fierrabras, directed by Peter Stein.

2014 – A Richard Strauss summer at the Salzburg Festival

But, as it was appropriate, the summer of 2014 was also marked by the celebration of 150 years since the birth of one of the festivals’ founders in 1920, Richard Strauss. Top of the bill: the lyrical masterpiece Der Rosenkavalier, with two successful signatures for the German opera scene – director Harry Kupfer and conductor Franz Welser-Möst. The Knight of the Rose… the German composer’s most performed opera in this ‘Richard Strauss Year’ (with approximately 350 performances worldwide this year, until now!). As for Strauss’ orchestral masterpieces, the Vienna Philharmonic presented two symphonic poems under the baton of the Venezuelan Gustavo Dudamel in two consecutive concerts, held on 23^rd and 24^th August on the Grosses Festspielhaus stage in Salzburg: the symphonic poems Death and Transfiguration, Op. 24, and Thus Spoke Zarathustra, Op. 30.

A hot summer under one of the most electrifying batons of the new millennium: Gustavo Dudamel conducting the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra

The symphonic ensemble that stood this year, as the backbone of the Salzburg Festival was the Vienna Philharmonic. It is a self-administered orchestra, having neither a music director nor a main conductor, so being invited along by the instrumentalists not only for a single programme, but for a whole five-week tour in Europe and Asia is an honour, as the Los Angeles Times wrote. To whom did this honour go to? To Gustavo Dudamel, one of the orchestra’s favourites for the past years and one of the most charismatic men of the international stage of the new millennium. A symbol of the accomplishment of a national socio-artistic project, El Sistema, the Venezuelan conductor is the Music Director of both the Los Angeles Philharmonic and the Simón Bolívar Symphony Orchestra of Venezuela.

A tribute to Richard Strauss at the 2014 Salzburg Festival: two symphonic poems performed by the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra under the electrifying baton of Gustavo Dudamel; live recording on Radio Romania Music, on Wednesday, 12^th November, starting at 15:30, under the title 'Five-star Concerts'.

Did you know that... this same summer Gustavo Dudamel made his debut as a film score composer in The Liberator, a biographical film about Simón Bolívar?