THE FESTIVAL PROGRAMME

Day 6

Friday 2 August

Maria Taferl

Concert, 6.00pm

Pilgrimage Church of Maria Taferl Vienna Chamber Choir Sacred Mozart

The headline work in this programme is Mozart’s popular Solemn Vespers setting, K339, with its limpid ‘Laudate Dominum’ for soprano – a Mozartian desert island choice for many. Sacred and secular often blur here and in the lesser known works (‘Te Deum’ K141, ‘Venite populi’ K260, Church Sonata No.6, K212) likewise written for Salzburg Cathedral. All three are full of that worldly exuberance characteristic of Mozart’s sacred music, while the offertory ‘Venite populi’ deploys a double choir in thrilling displays of counterpoint.

Sail overnight to Linz.

Day 7

A day of sailing through the beautiful Wachau Valley takes us from Vienna to the church of Maria Taferl. With its towers, gilded interior and hilltop site, Maria Taferl is one of Austria’s finest sights as well as one of the most important pilgrimage churches in the Alpine region. Construction took from 1660 to 1720, Carlo Lugaro and Jakob Prandtauer being the principal architects. Fitting out and decoration continued into the later 18th century.

Walkers: a morning walk of c. 6.5 km starts with a climb of 15 minutes on a small road into the vine-clad hills overlooking the Danube and dips periodically into shaded gullies with butterflies, abundant wildflowers and red-roofed villages in the valley below. The terrain is easy underfoot as the walk is predominantly on quiet, shaded roads. Return to Dürnstein for some free time before travelling by coach to Maria Taferl for the early-evening concert. Return to Dürnstein for dinner and the final night of the tour.

Saturday

3 August Linz

Arrive in Linz in the early morning. The historic capital of Upper Austria, Linz is a picturesque maze of streets, alleys and historic buildings grouped around a huge market square, only yards from the mooring. There is time for some independent exploration before coaches depart for the early-afternoon concert.

Day 8

Sunday 4 August Passau, Munich

Founded in the eighth century, the Monastery of St Florian became one of the richest in the Austrian Empire. Wholesale rebuilding took place between 1686 and 1751, Austria’s great period of political and military confidence and architectural ambition. The concert takes place in the Sala Terrena (Garden Hall), a room used for music making.

Concert, 2.30pm St Florian Monastery, Garden Hall

Akademie der Alte Musik Berlin

Finale: Serenades

Either side of a charming wind nocturne by the unfairly maligned Antonio Salieri are two Mozart serenades that raised the art of wind-band music (Harmonie) to new heights. Both the E flat Serenade and the so-called Gran Partita for twelve wind instruments and double bass delight and astonish with their melodic allure and kaleidoscopically varied colours. In the play and film Amadeus it was the celestial Adagio of the Gran Partita that first convinced Salieri of Mozart’s divinely inspired genius.

Sail upstream overnight from Linz to Passau, with a reception and dinner against a backdrop of river and wooded hills receding into the dusk.

Walkers: travel by coach to Vienna Airport (no concert today). Return to Heathrow at c. 2.15pm.

The ship moors at Passau and coaches leave for Munich city centre and the airport between 8.30 and 9.30am. See page 20 for the options available for return travel to London.

Selecting Option 2 allows for an afternoon of independent sightseeing in Munich.

More about the concerts

Private. All the performances are planned and administered by us, and the audience consists exclusively of those who have taken the festival package.

Seating. Specific seats are not reserved. You sit where you want.

Acoustics. This festival is more concerned with locale and authenticity than with acoustic perfection. The venues may have idiosyncrasies or reverberations of the sort not found in modern concert halls.

Changes. Musicians fall ill, venues may close for repairs, airlines alter schedules: there are many circumstances which could necessitate changes to the programme. We ask you to be understanding should they occur.

Floods and droughts. We cannot rule out changes to the programme arising from exceptionally high or low water levels on the Danube, either of which may bring river traffic to a halt. These might necessitate more travel by coach or the loss of a concert, though we would always try to minimise the impact on the itinerary.

Illustrations: left: Linz, main square and Old Cathedral, aquatint c. 1930; above: Munich, lithograph c. 1850 after Samuel Prout.