Richard Strauss Festival

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Richard Strauss Institute Garmisch-Partenkirchen, seat of the Richard Strauss Festival Office

The Richard Strauss Festival (RSF) is a music festival for classical music dedicated to the composer Richard Strauss , which takes place annually in June in Garmisch-Partenkirchen , Upper Bavaria .

concept

The composer Richard Strauss (1864–1949) moved into his villa in Garmisch in 1908 , financed with royalties from his successful opera Salome . The majority of his compositions afterwards were created in the representative villa, where he also welcomed numerous guests. The Richard Strauss Festival is committed to the musical legacy of Richard Strauss and offers the regional and international festival audience the music of Strauss in the place of his life.

The special attraction of the festival lies in being able to hear Richard Strauss' works close to their creation. The motto of the festival is therefore: "Top Music at Top Locations". The festival focuses on tone poems and other orchestral compositions on the one hand, and chamber music and songs on the other. Frequently performed works are Also sprach Zarathustra , the Alpine Symphony and the Four Last Songs . A shortcoming of the festival is that the composer's main compositional focus, the opera , could only be presented in a concert or semi-staged form, as Garmisch-Partenkirchen lacks an opera stage or a festival hall suitable for opera . Every year renowned orchestras and soloists make guest appearances at the festival, for example the Akademie für Alte Musik Berlin or the Wiener Symphoniker . The larger orchestral concerts mostly take place in the Garmisch Alpspitzhalle or, since 2018, as an open-air concert in the courtyard of the Benedictine Abbey of Ettal Abbey .

history

In memory of the composer's 40th year of death, the market town of Garmisch-Partenkirchen decided in 1989 to hold a Strauss festival week. August Everding , then General Director of the Bavarian State Theaters , was brought in to plan . With the support of a newly founded association, the support group Richard-Strauss-Festspiele Garmisch-Partenkirchen e. V. , The idea of ​​the annual Richard Strauss Days was born and implemented.

After changing organizers, the singer and director Brigitte Fassbaender was the artistic director of the Richard Strauss Festival from 2009 to 2017 . The organizational implementation has been carried out by the Richard Strauss Institute since 2009 . In 2018 the conductor Alexander Liebreich became artistic director of the festival. He expanded the concept and increasingly opened up the region around Garmisch-Partenkirchen for concerts. The festival was shaped by open-air concerts in Ettal Abbey and, since 2019, a concert in the Zugspitze summit station .

documentation

Venues

Honor plaque of the festival

This award was given to the following singers who have interpreted numerous works by Richard Strauss over the course of their careers:

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Richard Strauss Sponsorship Association
  2. ↑ Tanja Brinkmann: Alexander Liebreich is the new Artistic Director of the Richard Strauss Festival , Münchner Merkur , May 26, 2017
  3. ↑ Helmut R. Schulze: Richard Strauss Festival Garmisch-Partenkirchen , Edition HRS , Heidelberg 2019
  4. ^ Richard Strauss plaque of honor for mezzo-soprano Christa Ludwig . Retrieved April 11, 2018.
  5. ^ Opening program of the Richard Strauss Festival 2016 . Retrieved April 6, 2018.
  6. ^ Richard Strauss plaque of honor for Gundula Janowitz . Retrieved April 11, 2018.