A Pianist With Modern Flair Takes Over the Salzburg Festival

The premiere of Verdi’s “Aida” two nights earlier, starring Anna Netrebko singing the title role for the first time and Riccardo Muti conducting the Vienna Philharmonic, had gone smoothly. The new production of Shostakovich’s “Lady Macbeth of Mtensk,” starring Nina Stemme and conducted by Mariss Jansons, had proved such a success that the festival’s broadcasting partners were scrambling to add it to their lineups. And a few days earlier Peter Sellars had personally directed the telecast of his modern truth-and-reconciliation-themed production of Mozart’s “La Clemenza di Tito,” apparently employing a somewhat improvisational style that kept the crew in the control booth on their toes.

When the meeting wrapped up, Mr. Hinterhäuser briefly escaped to do what he seems to like best: hang out with the artists he has invited to Salzburg.

He set out in search of Patricia Kopatchinskaja, who was giving a talk about the Berg Violin Concerto she was to perform at the festival, and found her just as she was describing how difficult it is to play the violin. “It’s not the piano — you just press a key and get the sound,” she explained.

Mr. Hinterhäuser stifled a chortle. “I think I have to interfere now,” he joked.

Then he bounded up the stairs to a rehearsal room on the top floor of the Grosses Festpielhaus, the festival’s main venue, to look in on the pianist Igor Levit — with whom he played Messiaen’s piece for two pianos, “Visions de l’Amen,” earlier in the festival. When he opened the door, he found Mr. Levit pounding away at Shostakovich bare-chested and barefoot, in only jeans and a belt, since it was a stiflingly hot day and the Salzburg Festival’s general air of luxury does not extend much in the way of air conditioning. Mr. Hinterhäuser commiserated, no stranger to hot practice rooms.

The festival, which was founded nearly a century ago in Mozart’s birthplace, is a huge undertaking. This summer it is mounting five new fully staged opera productions (plus the return of Handel’s “Ariodante” starring Cecilia Bartoli, which premiered at Salzburg’s Whitsun festival this spring), over the course of just six weeks — close to what many big opera houses do over an entire season. Between its opera, concert and theater offerings, it will give 195 performances in more than a dozen venues across this small city in 41 days — and must sell what officials estimate is around 230,000 tickets, including many at steep prices, while catering to the donors and sponsors who are increasingly key to its survival.

Helga Rabl-Stadler, a former political columnist and politician here in Austria who has been the festival’s president since 1995, said that Mr. Hinterhäuser — who led the festival’s concert programming for several years and briefly served as an interim artistic director — was ideal for the post. “He has this special mixture of being experienced and new,” she said.

Photo

Some of his ideas have been unconventional. He brought Teodor Currentzis and his orchestra musicAeterna from Perm, Russia, to perform Mozart’s “Clemenza” and Mahler’s First Symphony — while the Vienna Philharmonic, which would often lay claim to those Austrian-based composers in the past, performed Shostakovich’s “Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District” and his “Leningrad” Symphony. He gave the green light to Mr. Sellars and Mr. Currentzis to interpolate other music by Mozart, including from his Mass in C minor, in their “Clemenza,” alarming some purists. (“It’s a new era,” Mr. Currentzis said.) He brought in new artists and new music, and programmed several mini festivals, including “Time With Shostakovich” and “Time With Grisey,” devoted to the music of Gérard Grisey, a student of Messiaen who died in 1998.

He has also managed to cultivate strong relationships with both longtime festival favorites and new generations of artists he has brought on board.

Mr. Muti, considered the leading interpreter of Verdi today, said that he had decided to stop doing staged operas in Salzburg after his past few outings disappointed him — until Mr. Hinterhäuser lured him back into the pit. Mr. Muti said he was persuaded by the offer to conduct “Aida” with Ms. Netrebko, in a new production by the artist Shirin Neshat that promised to forgo the traditional pomp, pyramids, elephants and horses that Mr. Muti felt cluttered up past productions. (At the opening night party, Mr. Muti drew belly laughs when he told a colorful anecdote about how the horses in some productions would “liberate” themselves on stage, near the prompter’s box.)

“I respect him as a pianist, as a musician,” Mr. Muti said of Mr. Hinterhäuser in an interview. “I think because he — he personally — asked me to do ‘Aida,’ I accepted.”

And Mr. Levit, who grew up admiring Mr. Hinterhäuser’s Morton Feldman recordings, said that he had loved batting around ideas with him. “He knows this is a festival, not a subscription series,” he said.

The “Wozzeck” was a big success — Zachary Woolfe wrote in The New York Times that “for all its antic fancifulness, this is also the truest, least over-the-top ‘Wozzeck’ I’ve seen” — leaving Mr. Hinterhäuser in the enviable position of provoking arguments in his first season over which of the operas he programmed had been the standout.

Now he is preparing to don his other hat again. On Saturday, he will accompany Mr. Goerne in some Mahler, though finding the hours to practice is a challenge.

“Sometimes it works, but sometimes my head is full of other things — the next day, the next three days, the next premiere,” he said. “There’s a constant, constant tension which I try not to show to the people. But it’s there.”

Continue reading the main story