DEAR AUDIENCES, DEAR ARTISTS,
Welcome to the Mozart Week 2025 – Destination Mozart!

In music, as in every other form of art, there is no progress. Today’s art is not better or more perfect than the art of yesterday. What makes the essence of art are collections of strata and structures, parts which fit in or dissolve, lines and contours which are transformed, thus creating an inexhaustible and integral architecture of sound art. The creators of each and every epoch contribute the material, norms, compactness, ideas, or even vacuums so that this architecture can assume its form. Geniuses with the ability to comprehend what is outstanding from what has existed before and to abstract it, those who have the talent to give the zeitgeist surrounding them its voice and form – even more, with the gift of producing new ways of construction, new associations, new results which revolutionise the totality of the architecture of the sound, change it for ever, indeed make it eternal – these geniuses are rare.

Monteverdi, Bach and Mozart are three of these undisputed, everlasting and ingenious architects. Bach’s presence can be heard in Mozart’s work and is well documented. When scores by the immortal Leipzig master came into Mozart’s hands at the beginning of his time in Vienna, he began to experiment with new forms, in particular with the art of the fugue and thereby found new answers to his burning creative questions. Nikolaus Harnoncourt in his fantastic book Der musikalische Dialog gave me the idea of presenting Monteverdi’s L’Orfeo, one of the most impressive masterpieces in music history, in the staging by Nikolaus Habjan and conducted by Christina Pluhar. (Incidentally, the fact that the source of inspiration, the stage director and the conductor all have a close connection with Graz is pure chance). Destination Mozart cannot be conceived without Monteverdi as the starting point, and as Harnoncourt reminds us “Monteverdi has a vein comparable only with Mozart”.

We are planning to present music by the brilliant geniuses who preceded the brilliant genius Mozart, works by Schütz, Buxtehude, Haydn, Bortniansky, Gluck and of course by Handel, whose music has an important status in Mozart’s œuvre. Interpretations on the highest level can be expected, the aim of all our excellent soloists, musicians, conductors and orchestras. And as time is certainly not in linear form but determined by eternal renewal, Destination Mozart reaches into our time with the world premiere of Tsotne Zedginidze’s Symphony No. 1, and a work by Faz?l Say. All paths lead to Mozart.

I am convinced that the great joy we have had in planning and preparing the programmes will become even greater when the works are performed. From the bottom of my
heart I sincerely hope that this joy will reach its zenith when the music flows into the hearts of all those who experience it live.

Monteverdi, Bach, Handel are on their way, and above all MOZART, MOZART, MOZART.