Orchestral concerts

The Bregenz Festival celebrates its 75^th birthday this year with epoch-making works by Richard Wagner and Joseph Haydn. In Haydn’s Creation the Bregenz Festival Chorus will be joined by other regional choirs – a sign of the deep-rooted ties around Lake Constance. The oratorio will be conducted by Andrés Orozco-Estrada, since autumn 2020 the new chief conductor of the Vienna Symphony Orchestra. He will also be on the rostrum for a concert performance of Wagner’s Das Rheingold. Coming down from the Swiss Alps, the mythologised river Rhine passes through Lake Constance, on which operas have been staged since 1946. In this anniversary year Bregenz will hear Wotan and his family of gods as well as Alberich, who steals the Rhinemaidens’ gold to make the mighty ring. For his Festspielhaus debut the Israeli conductor Omer Meir Wellber has chosen two works that were both premiered in 1946 and could hardly be more different: Charles Ives’ The Unanswered Question and Richard Strauss’ Oboe Concerto. They will be followed by Anton Bruckner’s boldest and most dynamic symphony. The Vorarlberg Symphony Orchestra under its chief conductor Leo McFall will give the first performance in Austria of the most recent symphony by Thomas Larcher, whose opera The Hunting Gun attracted such interest internationally when it was staged in Bregenz in 2018.

The 2021 Bregenz Festival runs from 21 July to 22 August 2021. For tickets and details visit www.bregenzerfestspiele.com or call 0043 5574 4076.+43 (0)5574 407-6.