Acrobatic “Beethoven 9” at Festspielhaus

The live musical part of the evening was performed by the Tonkunstler Orchestra in Lower Austria under the direction of its lead conductor Yutaka Sado, Wiener Singverein rehearsed by Johannes Prinz and Valentina Farkas (soprano), Idunno Munch (mezzo-soprano), Mingji Lee (tenor) and David Stevens (baritone). Existing solid single quartets.

The fact that the explanation left relatively little room for the agogic was probably due to the fact that careful and reliable coordination with the swift actions of the Circa Ensemble was required. Director Yaron Lifshitz was aware that Beethoven is generally considered to be a non-designer.

Photo series with 4 photos

That didn’t stop him from developing a great circus-ready performance with ten acrobatic participants, with pyramids of bodies falling and being picked up, iconic rope runs and other amazing interludes: parallel movements whose connection to music isn’t always immediately obvious, and which attracted a nervous attention anyway. A season-worthy finale and a very worthy directing.

Brigitte Forel says goodbye

Nine years later, Brigitte Forley’s reign as artistic director of the St. Polten Festival is about to come to an end. She was awarded the country’s Great Medal of Honor in gold and the audience thanked her with a standing ovation that lasted several minutes – more on that in Brigitte Forli’s Farewell to Festspielhaus (noe.ORF.at; 10 June 2022).

Even before the performance of the acrobatic Ninth Symphony, there was a summer festival in the front yard and there was a lot of noise: 150 dance lovers got a real folk festive atmosphere in Sylvain Emard’s choreography “Le Grand Continental”.