 
Heinrich Spängler
Helga Rabl-Stadler
Entführung
Masterpiece
Don Carlo
Egon Wellesz
The concerts
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ON THE FENCE
Egon Wellesz (1885-1974)
Die Bakchantinnen conducted by Clemens Krauss was given its world premiere
at the Vienna State Opera on 20 June 1931 during the Vienna Festival.
For its preparation Krauss held 60 rehearsals for the chorus and 20 for
the orchestra.
Then the work disappeared until relatively recently when
it was heard again in Bielefeld and Linz. It will be given
as a concert performance at the Salzburg Festival 2003 conducted by Marc
Albrecht.
Individually characteristic music
“To say in music, what one has to say without venturing into the
ties of a current idiom” was how the great old Austrian, composer
and musicologist Egon Wellesz (1885-1974) astutely described himself.
He was never a follower of fashionable trends; the Austrian musical tradition
from Schubert and Bruckner to Mahler and Schoenberg sufficed him as a
foundation in which to establish roots and thence to allow his own individually
characteristic music to flourish.
Wellesz was born into a middle-class home: his father was a businessman
in the textile industry, his mother came from Hungary and was very musical.
She allowed her son to learn to play the piano and took him with her to
the court opera where at the age of 13 he heard Gustav Mahler conducting
Weber’s Der Freischütz, an experience that made him decide
to embark on a career as a composer.
Pupil of Schoenberg
At the age of 19 Egon Wellesz became a pupil of Schoenberg and soon came into contact with the progressive circle of Viennese modernists: with Rilke, Loos, Kokoschka (who painted a portrait of him in 1911) and Emmy Stross, who in 1908 was to become his wife. Although Schoenberg’s influence was clear, Wellesz always maintained his own style. He never denied tradition but transformed it in order to find a “free”, strongly expressive, vivid and sound-intensive musical language. Work with motifs and themes, central to symphonic composition was also the core of his art.
Rudolf Hradil, Leuchtturm,
Venice, 1985
Respected Byzantine scholar
Egon Wellesz’s “second life” so to speak was as equally important as his composing activity. He studied in Vienna under Guido Adler, the father of musicology, published a thesis on the work of the Italian Baroque composer Giuseppe Bonno, edited an opera by J. J. Fux and finally pursued a university career which made him one of the most highly respected scholars of Byzantine music. The chant of the Eastern churches fascinated him, the solution to the mystery of the previously indecipherable Middle Byzantine notation was his great academic achievement and he was particularly pre-occupied from an early stage with the interaction between “western” and “eastern” art. Wellesz was always open to other cultures.
Homeland in music
Four ballets, five operas, nine symphonies (the first of which he composed at the age of 60), chamber music: this is a major compositional œuvre. From 1938 until his death in 1974 the “scholarly” life of Egon Wellesz took place primarily in Oxford. The University of Oxford awarded him an honorary doctorate, the first to be given to an Austrian composer since Haydn. Finding a homeland in exile: that was difficult not only for Wellesz. Finding a homeland in music – that can be sensed in the works that aim to bring tradition and innovation into individual equilibrium. It is time for a discovery.
Karl Harb
Rudolf Hradil, Salzburg,
Roofs and towers, 1990
Egon Wellesz
Die Bakchantinnen
Concert performance
Conductor Marc Albrecht
Dionysos Roman Trekel
Teiresias Georg Zeppenfeld
Kadmos Alfred Reiter
Queen Agave Eva-Maria Westbroek
Ino Alexandra Reinprecht
Panthea Márta Rosza
Pentheus Raymond Very
Servant of Pentheus Lauri Vasar
Radio Symphony Orchester of Vienna
Slovak Philharmonic Choir Bratislava
Felsenreitschule
24 August 2003 4 p.m.
Tickets are available from the Ticket Office
of the Salzburg Festival in the following price categories:
€ 45 / 60 / 75 / 90 / 105 / 120 / 150
Standing room tickets: € 8
Chamber Ensembles
of the Vienna Philharmonic
Monday 28 July 7.30 p.m.
Mozarteum
Wiener Virtuosen
Works by
Franz Xaver Süßmayr
Egon Wellesz
Hans Werner Henze
and
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
Friday 8 August 7.30 p.m.
Mozarteum
Ildiko Raimondi Soprano
René Staar Violin and Conductor
Ensemble Wiener Collage
Works by
Hans Werner Henze
Egon Wellesz
Arnold Schoenberg
Wladimir Pantchev
and
Zdzislaw Wysocki
Tickets:
€ 8 / 22 / 40 / 65 / 95
Telephone: 0043 662 8045-500
Telefax: 0043 662 8045-555
E-mail: info@salzburgfestival.at