Mozart Festival

 My soul was filled back up to the brim yesterday. I met my friend Lois, who had just returned from her yearly adventure to the Mozart Festival in Salzburg, Austria via Munich, Germany. After twenty years of attending this festival, she enjoyed her favorite hotels, restaurants, gardens, museums and statues in both cities. The weather was cold but rather nice this year. They actually saw some sunshine!

This is a widely attended international festival. Buses from all over Europe were parked along the streets, women dressed in formal kimonos walk the streets before and after the concerts, different languages could be heard throughout the city. Lois went to high school in Switzerland, learned German there but with a strong Swiss accent. Her yearly hotel mates from Switzerland consider her a Swiss native because of her accent.

Over a year before the concerts, hundreds of performers throughout the world submit their suggested program, a committee then chooses who is accepted, the tickets alone for the three concerts a day for 10 days ran Lois about $1,500. These are all pre-ordered, she books her same hotel each year and has her routines. She is a member of a high level chorus and needs to keep her voice going, so she rents a rehearsal room at an elementary music school, where they great her kindly every year.

She said that this year's concerts were the highest level of performances that she had seen in twenty years of attending the festival. The Latvian Radio Chorus was superior (who knew?), she was present to watch Andres Schiff conduct, saw an excellent opera and two concerts with the Vienna Philharmonic. I was rather surprised to learn that this group of extremely high level musician have no head. No Board of Directors. The members run the orchestra. They hire a conductor every year. They decide what they want to play. But, they were the last orchestra to finally allow women as members. I asked Lois how many women were on stage during the two concerts, she replied, "Four." She attended so many concerts, I just can't remember the details of the others.

Talking high level music with a passionate person was so inspirational. I miss these conversations in my daily life. I worked with respected musician of the highest levels that I almost took it all for granted. It was normal. I still miss parts of my job!