Salzburg Festival 2024

With three appearances at this year’s edition of the Salzburg Festival, Klangforum Wien was part of the Ouverture Spirituelle. Entitled Et exspecto, the concert series was looking to a hopeful future, fraught with uncertain expectations.

The first concert on 22 July included Georg Friedrich Haas's work for ensemble Ich suchte, aber ich fand ihn nicht, followed by Ancient Voices of Children, a song cycle by George Crumb. Soprano Sophia Burgos was contributing the eerie vocal effects called for in Claude Vivier's Lonely Child. Sylvain Cambreling, our Principal Guest Conductor Emeritus, lead the ensemble on this occasion.

Bas Wiegers then took over on 24 July, directing the ensemble in a concert performance of Haas’s opera Koma (libretto: Händl Klaus). Soprano Sarah Aristidou impersonated Michaela, a patient in a persistent vegetative state, who – owing to a brain trauma – is trapped in the intermediate realm between life and death, light and darkness.

Our third appearance in Salzburg on 29 July was the concert performance of Begehren, Beat Furrer's essential work for music theatre: Conducted by the composer himself, together with Cantando Admont, Soprano Sarah Aristidou and Christoph Brunner, the ensemble immersed itself in Furrer’s significant reinterpretation of the Orpheus myth.

Photos: (c) Salzburg Festival/Marco Borelli