THE FESTIVAL PROGRAMME

Day 4

Wednesday 31 July

Schloss Hof, Bratislava

Concert, 4.00pm

Klosterneuburg Abbey, Augustinus Hall

Duo Pleyel (piano ‘for four hands’)

Mozart’s Real Father transfer by coach to Schloss Hof.

Mozart was rarely one to go overboard about fellow composers. But he retained a special affection for J.S. Bach’s youngest son, Johann Christian, who had befriended the boy Mozart in London. As the solo and duo sonatas here reveal, Christian was a master of euphonious galanterie, and perhaps the crucial influence on Mozart. In this beguiling programme of solo and duo sonatas you might even be forgiven for mistaking one composer for the other!

Return to the ship by coach. Dinner on board while sailing downstream.

Walkers: depart Dürnstein and drive up the Leopoldsberg, a high hill with fine views over the capital and the Danube valley. Walk down through beech woods, vineyards and salubrious ivy-clad suburbs on a 5.5km walk on footpaths, country roads and quiet streets. Lunch is included, before a short drive to Klosterneuburg Abbey for a guided tour and afternoon concert. Drive on to Vienna, for dinner and the first of two nights.

Schloss Hof was enlarged by Lukas von Hildebrandt, the great architect of the early 18th century, as a grand hunting lodge for Prince Eugene of Savoy, the most distinguished soldier ever to have served the Habsburgs. It was later occupied by members of the imperial family. A major programme of restoration in the last 20 years has rescued the house and gardens from near dereliction.

Concert, 11.15am

Schloss Hof, Festsaal

Quatuor Van Kuijk

String Quartets: Lodi, Dissonance, Rider

As an aperitif to two contrasting Classical masterpieces the Van Kuijk Quartet offer the teenaged Mozart’s very first quartet, a sparkling, serenade-like work composed in the Italian town of Lodi. Fifteen years later the tortuous, dissonant slow introduction of Mozart’s otherwise sunny C major Quartet became something of a cause célèbre . Written for London, Haydn’s socalled ‘Rider’ Quartet contains a beautiful hymnlike Largo in a remote key and a coursing finale that gives the work its nickname.

Sail downstream to Bratislava.

Now capital of Slovakia, Bratislava was for 70 years the second city of Czechoslovakia and for 300 years before that the capital (as Pressburg) of the Habsburg rump of Hungary while Ottoman Turks occupied most of the country. Its compact historic centre is a dense mesh of unspoilt streets, squares and restored façades. There is a choice of museums and historic buildings to visit before an early-evening concert.

Of the many mansions in Bratislava, the grandest is the Primatial Palace, formerly the seat of the Archbishop of Hungary and now the Town Hall. It was completed in 1781 to designs by Melchior Hefele. The concert takes place in the Mirror Hall, the main reception room.

Recital, 5.15pm

Bratislava, Primatial Palace

Peter Donohoe

Mozart Piano Sonatas

The 19-year-old Mozart composed these, his earliest surviving keyboard sonatas, both for his own performance and for publication – though in the event only the last and most brilliant of the set, the D major, K284, was published. After playing all six sonatas on a new fortepiano in Augsburg he wrote euphorically to his father that ‘the last one, in D, sounds absolutely marvellous on Stein’s fortepiano’. Peter Donohoe caps this Mozart programme with Liszt’s fiendishly challenging Fantasy on themes from Don Giovanni . Far from being a mere potpourri, the Fantasy is a powerfully concentrated work that illuminates Mozart’s drama in ingenious new ways.

Return to the ship for dinner and sail upstream overnight to Vienna.

Walkers: transfer by coach from Vienna to Schloss Hof for the morning concert and lunch. Continue to the small town of Berg for a moderate circular walk on the Königswarte which finishes at Schloss Kittsee (6.5 km). The walk offers views towards Bratislava and over the Pannonian Basin. Return to Vienna for the second of two nights.

Day 5

Thursday 1 August Vienna

Moor again at Nussdorf in Vienna. Most of the day is free to continue to explore the wealth of museums and galleries.

The winter palace of the Habsburg emperors, the Hofburg is a vast agglomeration of buildings which grew during the course of six centuries of building and refurbishment. Our concert takes place in the Rittersaal, a mideighteenth-century hall with white and gold Rococo stucco and woodwork and red silk wall hangings.

Concert, 4.30pm

Hofburg, Rittersaal

The Mozartists (five solo voices)

Ian Page piano

The A–Z of Mozart Opera

Mozart was a born theatre animal, never happier than with the whiff of greasepaint in his nostrils. In their operatic A-Z the Mozartists manage the unlikely feat of slipping in a number from every Mozart opera, from the ingenuous Latin drama Apollo et Hyacinthus, composed when he was eleven, to La clemenza di Tito and Die Zauberflöte from his hectic final year, 1791. En route they take in solos and ensembles from rarities including the unfinished harem opera Zaide and the incidental music to Der Schauspieldirektor, a comic satire on prima donnas with attitude.

Dinner on board, though lingering in Vienna is an option. Sail upstream in the early morning.

Walkers: a free day in Vienna with the option of a walking tour of Vienna’s musical history with a local guide. Attend the afternoon concert, before travelling by coach back to Dürnstein, where two more nights are spent.