After last writing from Munich, we had our first performance at the Salzburg Festival. I had described Salzburg to one of our publicists as the “Cannes of classical music” in an effort to describe atmosphere, and what the Pittsburgh Symphony was attending. That may not be entirely accurate, but a decent picture for a movie-lover: whereas American directors of course play a huge part in Cannes, the Salzburg Festival tends to be a fairly European affair. Talk from the critics is usually Salzburg opera productions and their varying degrees of experimentalism—whether they’re successful or not—or some summer glimpses of the Berlin and Vienna Philharmonics.

It’s intriguing in its own right, then, that we’re the only American orchestra invited, and consistently so: are we “European-leaning” in our sound, in our reputation? Perhaps: Leif Ove Andsnes said while he was visiting Pittsburgh for a performance of the same Rachmaninoff we played tonight that people in Europe highlight the Pittsburgh Symphony as an orchestra to look out for, if you’re not already. But it’s also futile to try and decipher what “European-leaning” would mean in a sound. Whatever the cause, we found ourselves in the Mozart-mecca where everyone seemed to run into European musical friends who gather for the festival. I did the same, in staff-fashion, and met with our European PR firm at a café, then with someone from another agency that was, of course, in town. While strolling, we ran into Manfred eating at an outdoor café with his family. That, it seems, is the feeling of summer in Salzburg: everyone’s there.

Before the performance, I decided it would be interesting to film Manfred going from his dressing room to the stage (I let him know I would). That resulted in this video. We also decided to do a European entrance, where the entire orchestra enters at once (as opposed to gradually coming onstage prior to the conductor). Bronfman had gone off the stage in the first half to a crowd that clearly wanted an encore, but Rach 3 is a piece that gets done with its pianist, and not the other way around. Mahler’s Fifth started off on a shaky foot: the director of concerts at Salzburg rushed backstage, where I was standing, during the opening movement and asked his crew why there was some “noise interference” from the sound shell. It turned out to be a hearing-aid in need of batteries, but someone shouted for it to be fixed during a pause between movements, and it was heard no more. 

Luckily, the drama didn’t seem to ruin the performance, even if most critics mentioned the incident in their review. Our principal horn, William Caballero, and principal trumpet, Micah Wilkinson, got special shout-outs for their heavy lifting in the symphony. The applause lasted, then Manfred did the encore move that some, including myself, might call badass, and signaled before he reached the podium for our percussionists to start the drumroll announcing an encore: the waltz from Der Rosenkavalier. One critic asked if Manfred was, with a winking eye, trying to show the Austrian audience how to waltz with an American orchestra.

After Salzburg, Manfred had invited us to visited St. Florian Monastery with him, specially toured by a Brother he knew. St. Florian is the resting place of Bruckner, who is celebrating his 200th birthday this year. We also just released our recording of Bruckner’s 7th Symphony, so we were going to explore a place that was dear to this composer that has been important to the PSO’s repertoire, and perhaps to find answers to music that is both simple and mystifying—childlike and complicated. 

We arrived to this rather secluded place outside Linz, right between our stops of Salzburg and Vienna. I’ll include some pictures of the surprising grandeur of this place, left over from when the Hapsburgs and Catholic Church were difficult to disentangle. You can also see some footage on a travel vlog on our social channels. We paraded through the various libraries, halls and chambers that evidently were held dear by Bruckner, since it was a place he returned to (where he composed the Seventh) and where he’d requested to be buried.

Eventually, after a recital of Bach, Handel and Bruckner on the “Bruckner Organ,” we made our way to the catacombs, which were uncannily well-swept with sheer white walls and just a few ornate coffins from the 18th centuries whose sometime importance have since worn well off. We continued to the back of the catacombs to a tomb whose importance was the entire reason we were there: Bruckner’s tomb.

It was strange, but his music is strange: as if lying in state, Bruckner’s ornate, gold coffin was placed on a pedestal in the prime and reverend burial spot underneath the chapel. Facing him were thousands of skulls and bones which the Brother said were the remains of early Christians devoted to the Roman martyr St. Florian, arranged this way in a heavy-handed, 19th century bit of morbid theater.

I later learned at the Austrian National Library’s own exhibit on Bruckner in Vienna that Brahms had called him something like a “blabbering fool” and a “victim of the priests of St. Florian.” Somehow, thinking back, I can’t help but think that what I saw of his tomb is in keeping with Brahms’ words—not that he was a fool or victim, but that someone could easily have seen him that way. There was an attempt to be accepted: he seemed to want to be accepted spiritually both by St. Florian and God (his notebooks are filled with obsessive prayer), and musically accepted as a Great (we have such different drafts of his symphonies because he seemed to accept different opinions).

It was a bit of a visit of pity: whatever opinion we had of him through his music was so much more assured and, I think, accurate than, it seems, his own opinion of himself. The performative aspect of his tomb was not exactly the reality and depth of his music: we knew him better than the people in his time.

I’ll have to skip a couple of days because of a minor battle that occurred in Vienna between a piece of veal Schnitzel and my stomach. They were our days off in Vienna, and most people were visiting the Hofburg, Belvedere, friends, or off on their own trips to Budapest or Venice, as the Post-Gazette recounted. We had one rehearsal at the Vienna Konzerthaus, where we’ll be back to finish our tour on September 7th, before our Grafenegg concert, and only concert with Maria Duenas on the tour. 

Grafenegg hosts a summer festival every year directed by a friend of the orchestra, Rudolf Buchbinder, who recently performed the complete Beethoven piano concertos in Pittsburgh last November—conducting from the piano. Wearing a deep green jacket and gracious smile, he welcomed Manfred and the orchestra at the top of our brief rehearsal. 

That rehearsal was our one bit of half an hour to test a precarious situation: an outdoor venue. Grafenegg is a neo-Gothic castle about 45 minutes outside Vienna with both indoor and outdoor performance spaces. In 2022, we had to play indoors due to weather, but on Sunday the sun was shining and the breeze blowing. Unfortunately, that also isn’t great news. We were told that because of the breeze, they couldn’t lower the sun shields to protect not only the musicians themselves but, maybe even more importantly, the valuable wood of the string instruments. Their fix? Umbrellas, which they situated at the top of the stage. I’ll include a photo where you can see them.

Just 45 minutes before the concert itself began, our rehearsal ended, and guests began wandering into the large amphitheater or situating themselves on the sloped lawn. It wasn’t unlike a miniature Tanglewood in Austria, and something about an outdoor concert in the summer placed the emphasis on the experience rather than the rigor of the music. Mingling on the huge lawns sparsely lit, the fellowship of a festival put on by our friend—these seemed to be the rewards of this particular stop on our trip, which was (literally) a breath of fresh air coming off of a closely-watched performance in Salzburg at the heart of the classical world.

For many musicians on tour, Salzburg and Grafenegg are familiar places. Even the hotels and travel routes are known. But in setting out from Vienna this time, we were going to a brand-new place for the orchestra: the Südtirol (South Tyrol) Festival in Merano, Italy—right in the middle of the Dolomites. After a 4-hour train ride from Vienna to Innsbruck (we took up 2 full train cars), we hopped on buses which hopped on a somewhat-precarious highway leading out of Innsbruck, South toward Italy.

On my particular bus, most people had their phones out most of the time. The area around Salzburg is mountainous, but this was a highway that more resembled a constant bridge across huge valleys that followed a mountainside until it needed to go a different direction. It reminded me a little of I-70 going West out of Denver (we have to find our comparisons…). Castles or monasteries would pop up on peaks, which we’d pass without time to wonder when or how they got there. 

Eventually, we came through a narrow valley into a larger, flat expanse which is home to Bolzano, a larger city about 30 minutes from Merano. The staff decided we would take advantage of this change in country and swap schnitzel for pizza: we taxied to the old town and ordered 8 pizzas for 8 people. A few times in Germany and Austria so far I’ve wondered, sometimes aloud, if we might be spared a green vegetable or two with our dinner, and so a wealth of tomatoes, basil and rocket was a welcome sight. 

There were many question marks around our performance in Merano, at least for me. I had only spoken with someone from the festival once, with mixed results, and we knew the stage was probably going to be small enough to force us to reduce our strings. Those signs may have pointed to a small music festival a good 2 hours into an incredibly mountainous region, but what greeted us at the Kurhaus in Merano was an incredible stage in a hall parading French doors that led out to an audible river with the mountain pastures as its backdrop. It has, for me, been the surprise of the tour so far—but that, of course, has to do with expectations and judgements.

So, after our rehearsal this morning, they’re finishing Mahler 1 upstairs while I type. Bronfman had, before intermission, conceded this time to an encore of Rachmaninoff’s G minor prelude. Now the horns are probably standing (Mahler asks them to in the score) for the final few D Major fanfares of his First Symphony. I would wait to tell you what encores we’ll play, but you wouldn’t believe how quickly everyone gets dressed and packed up to go back to bed after the concert. I’ll need to be out of here soon… 

Keene Carter, Communications Manager
August 29, 2024, Merano, Italy