Destination Mozart – This is the motto of the 2025 Mozart Week Festival: it reflects our desire to forge a link between Wolfgang Amadé Mozart and the earlier composers whose genius prepared the way for him and who served as a model and as a source of inspiration. According to the Festival’s intendant Rolando Villazón, "Men and women of genius have the ability to grasp and synthesize the outstanding qualities of all that has gone before them. They can lend their voice to the prevailing zeitgeist, investing it with a new form, creating new structures, forging new connections and producing new results. Monteverdi, Bach and Mozart are three of these inspired architects whose role has never been disputed and whose influence is abiding. It is impossible not to hear Bach’s influence on Mozart’s music. It was Nikolaus Harnoncourt whose book The Musical Dialogue gave me the idea of staging Monteverdi’s L’Orfeo – one of the most impressive masterworks in the history of music – at the Mozart Week Festival. As a gifted opera composer, Mozart is inconceivable without Monteverdi as his starting point, as Harnoncourt was keen to remind us. All roads lead to Mozart – in the case of Destination Mozart this journey takes us via Monteverdi, Handel, Bach, Haydn and many others besides."
Destination Mozart – Under this heading come grand opera in the guise of Monteverdi’s L’Orfeo, an elaborate puppet show with Die Gärtnerin aus Liebe (the German version of La finta giardiniera), orchestral concerts and chamber music as well as street dancing, a Mozart pub quiz, silent films with live accompaniment, a family programme, guided tours, talks and much more besides. Destination Mozart features works by Monteverdi, Handel, Bach, Haydn, Schütz, Buxtehude, Bortniansky, Gluck and, of course, Mozart himself, but it also includes the world premiere of a new piece by the young composer Tsotne Zedginidze and a piece by Fazil Say that bring us down to the present day. Since it was founded in 1956, the first major festival of the calendar year has brought the world’s leading Mozartians to Salzburg, and 2025 will be no exception. Among the distinguished artists, ensembles and orchestras that are expected are Ádám Fischer, Igor Levit, Sonya Yoncheva, Oksana Lyniv, Juan Diego Flórez, Michael Schade, the early-music specialist Jordi Savall and Le Concert des Nations, the Concentus Musicus of Vienna, the Collegium Vocale of Ghent under Philippe Herreweghe, the Mahler Chamber Orchestra with Mitsuko Uchida, lautten compagney of Berlin, the Chamber Orchestra of Europe under Robin Ticciati, the Cappella Andrea Barca with Sir András Schiff, the internationally acclaimed pianist Fazil Say, the Hagen Quartet, François Leleux, Lisa Batiashvili, the brothers Andreas and Daniel Ottensamer and, of course, the Vienna Philharmonic.
The International Mozarteum Foundation
For more than two and a half centuries Wolfgang Amadé Mozart has fascinated people all over the world through his music and his personality. The International Mozarteum Foundation is the world’s leading institution aimed at preserving and disseminating this priceless cultural legacy. It also seeks to make the world aware of Mozart’s manifold facets by opening up access to his music and to introduce his life and personality to everyone, regardless of their age.
A non-profit-making organization, the Salzburg Mozarteum Foundation engages with the figure of Mozart as both man and artist and to this end has established initiatives in three key areas, organizing concerts, running Mozart museums and pursuing research, in that way building a bridge between the preservation of a tradition and the promotion of contemporary culture. Its aim is to open up different perspectives and encourage new ideas in our engagement with the composer. The Mozart Week Festival was established in 1956 with the goal of celebrating Mozart’s birthday each January.
The Society of the Salzburg Mozarteum Foundation was established as the International Mozarteum Foundation in 1880 by the townspeople of Salzburg, although its origins date back to the Cathedral Music Society and Mozarteum that was set up in 1841. Mozart’s widow Constanze and their two sons Carl Thomas and Franz Xaver Wolfgang donated much of their estate to the Society. As a result, the Mozarteum Foundation owns the world’s largest collection of original letters, portraits and instruments once in the possession of the Mozart family.
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