It is commonly said that travel broadens the mind. This is especially true of musicians. The works of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Joseph Haydn, Franz Liszt and Gustav Mahler would be unimaginable as we know them if these composers had not spent much of their lives traveling. In the greatest cities of Europe they not only captivated audiences with their music; they also were the beneficiaries of ideas and inspiration for many of their works.

When nearly 150,000 people gather each year to hear the Vienna Philharmonic’s open- air Concert for Europe, the audience is as diverse as Europe itself. The grounds of Schönbrunn Palace become a meeting place where visitors to Vienna, locals, and music lovers alike are drawn together to enjoy the tunes of world-famous composers. These luminaries also include Austrians such as Mozart, Haydn, Liszt and Mahler, who undoubtedly would have felt right at home in this ethnic mix – after all, it was through their travels and contact with other cultures that they developed their distinctive musical style.

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart was only six years old when he and his family embarked on what at the time was truly a “grand tour”. The Mozarts traveled through countless cities in Germany and Belgium on their way to Paris and London, where the wunderkind delighted listeners with his virtuosity as a pianist. Even if today Mozart’s works give the impression of being completely homogeneous, they in fact represent a conglomerate of influences and ideas from a wide variety of cultural regions. The great influence that Italy, for example, had on Mozart’s work is evident in his adoption of formal elements of Italian opera as well as in his collaboration with the Venetian librettist Lorenzo da Ponte.

Even for a composer so tied to his roots as Joseph Haydn was, travel and European cultural exchange were vital to the continued development of his style. When Haydn, who spent nearly his entire adult life in the service of the Princes Esterházy, received an offer in 1791 to visit England and conduct his new symphonies there, he accepted immediately. His friend Mozart expressed concern that Haydn didn’t even speak English, but the latter replied, “My language is understood all over the world!” The four years spent in England supplied Haydn with a creative spark: the works he produced there would have been sufficient to fill other composers’ entire careers. The Austrian completed no fewer than 250 compositions in London, among them his opera L’anima del filosofo and the twelve so-called London Symphonies, which include the beloved Drumroll Symphony. It was in these very works composed while abroad that Haydn’s Burgenland roots seem most evident, and some of the harmonies and melodies he used were undoubtedly exotic for British ears. In his London Symphonies, for instance, Haydn quotes Hungarian and Croat folk songs, making use of the so-called “gypsy scale”.

A composer with equally strong ties to his homeland, today’s province of Burgenland, was Franz Liszt, who preferred to call himself Liszt Ferencz. Even as a child he was fascinated by the music he heard in Raiding, his hometown, played by the Hungarian Romani. He was particularly impressed that these musicians had an enormous repertoire of their own melodies as well as pieces by others and were not tied to printed music or rules of composition. Although Liszt left his homeland at the age of twelve, he remained true to his roots in terms of his music. As colorful and diverse as his life was also his music , reflecting the influences of Viennese Classicism, the cultural and political spirit of nineteenth-century Paris, the musical culture of Italy, Russia and Germany, and his distinctly Hungarian heritage. The result was a body of works that even today defies categorization.

No less cosmopolitan was Gustav Mahler, born into a Jewish family in Moravia. At an early age he was influenced by the many kinds of music that surrounded him, from Moravian folk music and the marches of the military bands to the coarse songs he heard at the surrounding taverns. Soon after completing his studies in Vienna he gained a reputation as a talented conductor, and he worked as musical director in Ljubljana, Kassel, Prague, Leipzig, Budapest and Hamburg before being named court music director in Vienna.

Today the influence of Austria’s great musicians can still be felt: this country has become a meeting place for music lovers from all over the world who come here to attend festivals and visit the places these famed composers lived and worked in order to better understand their sublime music.

berge.hören

Hiking with musicians to mountain huts, getting to know their worlds of sound and discovering a source of inspiration – that’s what „berge.hören” (listening to the mountains) in Vorarlberg’s Brandner Valley is all about.

The Brandner Valley is one of the most beautiful alpine valleys in Austria. The best way to discover them is by hiking in September, when the view is clear and the temperatures are neither too cold nor too warm. The „berge.hören“ cultural project makes use of this ideal time by inviting people to come on cultural and leisurely hikes every Sunday in September. During the hikes, musicians and mountain guides accompany hikers to broaden their horizons on a panoramic and musical level.

That’s because vibrant music is played in the cabins after an enjoyable hike: the music ranges from classical music to jazz to bossanova in alpine areas. Alpine traditions are thereby intertwined with sounds from other cultures, as if resounding Balkan music or waltzes and mazurkas from the Danube region had forever been at home here. High-brow art comes together with the opportunity to meet the artist in person whilst hiking together. The discovery of the culinary specialties of the Vorarlberg mountain cabins completes this cross-border experience.

www.brandnertal.at/genuss-kultur/berge.hoeren

Magical Advent In Salzburger Land

At Christmastime, the winter-and ski paradise of SalzburgerLand inspires a contemplative journey of discovery through its traditions and customs—from the golden city’s Old Town and up over the snow-covered mountains to the lake region of the Salzkammergut.

Those who explore SalzburgerLand early in the Christmas season will find the festive Old Town to be a special feast for the senses. The expansive Christkindl market by the cathedral features jewelry, floral arrangements, toys and all kinds of goodies in brightly lit wooden stalls. Tempting whiffs of frankenscense, roasted nuts, and hearty baked potatoes with cheese and bacon permeate the winter air. An Advent choir sings traditional Christmas songs in front of the baroque cathedral, which, like the rest of the Old Town, has been designated a UNESCO world cultural treasure.

Not far from the Christmas market is Stiftsbäckerei St. Peter on Kapitalplatz, right next to the Mönchsberg. The oldest bakery in the city of Salzburg, its founding can be traced back to the 12th century. At Christmastime, plums and raisins are added to the bread baked with natural sourdough to create a fruit cake that keeps fresh for several weeks. It’s a variation of the Salzburg kletzen bread in which kletzen, or dried pears, are mixed into the dough. Next to the Summer Music Festival, Advent is the most festive time in the city of Salzburg, earning it the rank of 4th most beautiful Christmas city in the world (after Reykjavik, Nürnberg and Pogost in Belarus).

A few kilometers farther south, enjoy a glass of glühwein in a tranquil setting at the traditional Christkindl market St. Leonhard bei Grödig. At the foot of St. Leonhard Church, the market carries handmade crafts from just about every province; Christmas fragrances and candles; tree ornaments made of glass, straw and ceramic; homemade cakes; bread with savory spreads; and colorful wooden toys made by people with special needs, who benefit from the net proceeds of St. Leonhard’s market.

Just as idyllic is the magical Hellbrunn Christmas market that boasts picturesque Hellbrunn Castle as its backdrop. Children’s eyes light up with joy at the sight of sausage grilling and fairy tales around the campfire, a jingling Christmas train, pony rides, a fairytale theater, a Christmas post office and cookie stand. The Advent magic in Hellbrunn is surrounded by Salzburg folk music, wind- and alpine horn ensembles, and various Christmas choirs. Strains of the world-famous song Silent Night, which was written nearby, fill the air. The six-verse Christmas melody was composed in the year 1818 in the northern Salzburg town of Oberndorf. Still today, throngs of people make a pilgrimage to the town’s Silent Night chapel.

Animals play a central role nearby Henndorf: At Gut Aiderbichel, homeless animals of all types find refuge thanks to animal-welfare patron Michael Aufhauser. At the Advent market, Christmas crafts are as much a part of the program as feeding the pigs and grooming the horses. Along with handmade crafts, the market beckons with holiday punch, hearty farmer’s fare and traditional Salzburg ginger cookies. Children can even take their first pony ride here.

At a pagan procession in the Wagrain ski area, revelers wearing grotesque masks and horns use drumming and devilish dances to strike fear in the spectators. The hand- — carved wooden masks, which demonstrate the exceptional skill of this traditional craftwork, can also be found at the nearby Christmas market. Not far from the revelry and cacophony, Salzburg’s alpine Advent market in Grossarl makes après-ski all the more inviting with torchlight and candle glimmer. Skiers can snack on sweet baked apples and hearty bread spread with farmers’ speck, while admiring finely detailed ceramic, wood and wax artwork.

A special experience for adults and children alike is the Radstädter hike that takes place two times before Christmas. The hike begins at the Kaiser promenade, illuminated start to finish with torches. At a spot above the church, where fairy tales are told by a flickering camp fire, hikers enter the Christmas forest and, after the crèche, arrive at a nativity play by another camp fire. The Christmas story is presented by amateur actors and enhanced by the soft atmospheric sounds of the forest. At the end of the short hike through this winter wonderland, hikers hear a contemplative trio singing in the dark. At the nearby castle of Hohenwerfen, the romantic advent market (open on select days) takes visitors back in time with a nativity play, trumpeters atop towers, and craft workshops.

Salzburger Land’s lake region also offers festive experiences throughout the Christmas season. In the region around the Fuschlsee, Christmas readings, caroling, and Advent markets and processions take place in early December. Around the nearby Wolfgangsee, three Christmas markets—in St. Wolfgang, St Gilgen and Strobel—are a special draw for people in the Christmas spirit throughout the Salzkammergut. Before Christmas, all three towns are lit up, sparkling and glittering everywhere—even on the water. Connected by the lake, these particularly atmospheric and radiant Advent markets have their very own ferry to take visitors from one market to the next. The more than 19-meter-high (62-ft) floating peace lantern is a symbol of advent on the Wolfgangsee. Floating on a mighty barge in front of the well-known romantic hotel Weisses Rössl, it’s surrounded by shimmering light and illuminates the way for those coming across the lake on the Advent ferry. In all three towns, authentic traditions set the mood: a crèche with goats, ponies and donkeys amid lovingly decorated stalls, where market-goers can enjoy glühwein and punch, and admire candles and hand-painted angels. Numerous events, concerts and choral nativity plays, fine Christmas breads and ginger cookies from the region invite visitors to linger and enjoy. Don’t miss the ice-skating rink or a trip on the Zwölferhorn cable-car that whisks guests from the joyous Advent activities to the peace of the mountaintop.

And on December 24th, when bells ring to announce the Christ Child, everyone starts getting excited all over again for next year’s Christmas in Salzburger-Land.

Links:

www.christkindlmarkt.co.at

www.wagrain.at

www.adventmarktsanktleonhard.at

www.hellbrunneradventzauber.at

www.stillenacht-oberndorf.at

www.gut-aiderbichl.com

www.radstadt.com/radstadt-im-winter.html

www.forstau.at/winter/winterwandern.htm

www.salzburger-bergadvent.at

www.wolfgangseer-advent.at

All that jazz

In dim nightclubs, on classical concert stages or at open-air events: there are countless variations on the theme of “jazz in Austria”.

In the beginning was Jazzland. Well, there were, of course, other jazz clubs before that, like the Jazzcasino, founded by Austrian clarinettist Fatty George in the 1950s. But things didn’t really start happening until 1972, when the “Landl”, as Jazzland is affectionately known, opened its doors, the small subterranean club beneath St. Ruprecht Church in the center of Vienna. Back in those days the city’s jazz scene was rather limited, to put it mildly. But Jazzland quickly became a meeting place for top-tier musicians from both Austria and overseas – among them blues legends like Memphis Slim, classic jazz musicians such as Bud Freeman, swing stars like Teddy Wilson and modern-jazz proponents like Art Farmer. Some 300 international stars have appeared here since the club opened – as well, of course, as nearly every local jazz musician.

Only a few years later the Jazz Festival Wiesen was born, which just as quickly became an Austrian jazz institution. One of the special charms of this three-day event is certainly its splendid setting: situated in a valley surrounded by woods and meadows, the festival offers an irresistible mixture of top-class performances by Austrian and international artists, an exuberant party atmosphere and pure, unspoiled nature – many of the guests still camp out directly on the grounds.

All in all, however, jazz is still an urban phenomenon in this country, with Vienna as its unofficial capital. The German magazine “Jazzthetik” even called it “Europe’s Number One Jazz City”. In any case, one of the most successful festivals of its kind is held here: the line-up for the Jazz Fest Wien reads like a who’s who of the international music scene, with last year’s event attracting some 60,000 fans. And no one seems to mind that along with jazz stars like Bobby McFerrin and Al Jarreau, an increasing number of performers of jazz-related styles are taking the stage. In addition to the outstanding artists, it is also the venues that make the festival so popular. The festival musicians perform at exquisite locations like the Vienna State Opera and the lovely arcaded courtyard of the City Hall as well as at the city’s best-known jazz clubs – first and foremost Porgy & Bess.

And speaking of “Porgy”: when it opened, the club was an insiders’ tip that some evenings drew only a handful of paying guests. Now the Austrian – and some even say European – jazz scene is unimaginable without it. Since 2000 Porgy & Bess has been located in a cellar in the heart of Vienna, a space in which professional and amateur theater groups are said to have performed since the mid-19th century. The plush ambience is still present today, and on busy evenings (which means nearly every evening) things can become rather crowded. But this congestion contributes to the atmosphere, and one can’t help admire how casually and cheerfully the waiters juggle their trays as they navigate through the turmoil of tables and guests.

The atmosphere at Birdland, in the cellar of the Hilton Hotel, is more coolly elegant than raucous. Thanks to its famous founder, Joe Zawinul, it quickly became a fixture of the jazz scene. The club is, naturally, named for Zawinul’s best-known composition – which, in turn, is a homage to the legendary New York jazz club of the same name that for many years was something of a second living room for the Austrian star musician, who unfortunately has since passed away. Another nightspot named for a jazz legend is Miles Smiles, in the 8th district: since the club can hold only 50 to 70 people, an especially intimate atmosphere develops at performances there, which is one reason that “Miles” is such a favorite with jazz fans.

So is good jazz found only in Vienna? Hardly. In Graz alone there is a large number of jazz clubs, including the Royal Garden Jazz Club, Stockwerk, WIST and Miles, and the GrazJazzNacht is the perfect opportunity to wander from club to club, checking out the various styles on offer. In the course of an evening’s ramble, one can find everything from traditional swing, crossover and contemporary jazz improvisation to soul jazz and Latin jazz.

The “Jazz Sommer Graz”, on the other hand, is an open-air event, held on the Kasematten stage with the city’s Schlossberg – the “Castle Hill” – as a romantic backdrop. A tempting alternative is the “Dom im Berg”, a 20-metre wide, 12-metre high and 28-metre deep room set in the middle of the rock of the Schlossberg.

From Vienna, Wiesen and Graz on to the Lower Austrian capital, St. Pölten. This is the home of the MM Jazz Festival, founded by the “Austrian Grand Dame of Swing”, Marianne Mendt, and featuring established local stars like the Vienna Art Orchestra and the Puschnig Quintet as well as up-and-coming jazz talents from the MM Young Artist Programme.

In the area of classical music much has always been done to promote young musicians, but in jazz, support for young composers and ensembles comes primarily through the efforts of established local musicians. The “JazzWerkstatt Wien” is one example of an initiative devoted to the presentation of young talents, and it has now expanded from Vienna to cover all of Austria. But the most novel way of finding out what young jazz musicians are up to is by attending casual, spontaneous events like “living-room concerts”, which usually are announced at the last minute via email and take place in front of only a handful of people. To find out about these events, you have to keep your ears open and get to know the right people – but that happens relatively quickly in Vienna.

Austrian jazz greats Harry Stojka, Wolfgang Puschnig, Wolfgang Muthspiel, Vienna Art Orchestra

International Accordion Festival in Vienna, February – March Superlative accordion festival, 31 days, sensational programme www.akkordeonfestival.at

INNtoene. Jazz am Bauernhof, May Renowned jazz musicians and newcomers from various cultures. Modern jazz, Brazilian and Jewish folk, electronic grooves… www.inntoene.com

Jazz Fest Wien June – July International line-up, great venues like the MuseumsQuartier, City Hall, State Opera, Spittelau District Heating Facility (open air) – free admission to some events – also features soul, rock and pop www.viennajazz.org

Jazz Sommer Graz from 10 July – 2 August 08 On Graz’s Schlossberg and in the “Dom im Berg” www.jazzsommergraz.at

Jazz Festival Wiesen from 25-27 July 2008 Jazz, camping (optional) and hip open-air atmosphere www.jazzgroove.at

Glatt & Verkehrt in Krems 13-27 July 2008 Festival for new folk music, held in the courtyard of “Winzer Krems”, with a great view over the entire city www.glattundverkehrt.at

Jazz Festival in Saalfelden from 21-24 August 2008 All concerts are broadcast live to a tent where the performances can be enjoyed for free www.jazzsaalfelden.com

proFILE Jazz Festival in Dornbirn in September 2008 Each evening is dedicated to a different prominent musician www.spielboden.at

Kontraste. Festival for Strange Music in Lower Austria from 3-11 Oct. 2008 Genres and movements beyond the mainstream www.klangraum.at/programm/kontraste

Salzburg Jazzherbst October – November International stars of the jazz scene www.viennaentertainment.com

Austria – Land of Classical Music

All over the world Austria enjoys a reputation as the “land of music”. The classical tradition has always been carefully cultivated here – and it still lives on today.

Much in this country still testifies to the glorious role that Austria has played in classical music through the ages – and still continues to play: the magnificent Vienna State Opera on that city’s Ringstraße, concert halls all over the country and the immortal works of the many great artists of the past and present. Vienna, for example, was home to some of the most important composers in music history, such as Joseph Haydn, Franz Schubert, Anton Bruckner and Gustav Mahler. During these composers’ lifetimes Vienna was already known as the “music capital of the world”. Later, modern classical composers like Arnold Schoenberg and Gottfried von Einem made Vienna the musical center of their lives. And Salzburg produced not only Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart: the legendary conductor Herbert von Karajan, who would have celebrated his 100th birthday in 2008, was also born in this city and for decades was an influential force behind the Salzburg Festival.

Thousands upon thousands of music lovers travel to this country each year to experience the fabled Austrian sound – but they also come here to learn, with some 600 young talents from all over the world currently studying at the Vienna Conservatory. No less important as a training center for young musicians is Salzburg’s Mozarteum University, with no fewer than 1,500 students – which means that the prospects are very good that Austria will continue to produce great artists in the future. Some exceptionally talented musicians later go on to play in the Mozarteum Orchestra. Originally the student orchestra of the University, it is today an ensemble of professional musicians, serving, among other things, as the Symphony Orchestra of Salzburg City and Salzburg Province.

However, classical-music lovers are faced with something of a “problem” in this country: the large number of operas, concerts and festivals puts one in an agony of indecision. For example, one would naturally like to hear the Vienna Boys’ Choir sing in their home country, although there are plenty of opportunities for this in other places as well. This ensemble, which could lay claim to being the “world’s oldest boy group” (as well as the youngest), performs some 300 concerts all over the world each year. In addition to the group’s activities in the field of classical music – such as performances in the Hofmusikkapelle, in oratorios and as a part of large choral and symphonic works – the repertoire of these extremely talented youngsters ranges from world music to pop and film music. Presently a film is even being made about the Vienna Boys’ Choir: a stunning mixture of feature film and documentary.

A few years older – but no less renowned – are the members of the Vienna Philharmonic. This orchestra is regarded as one of the best in the world, with its distinctive “Vienna sound” and its palpable link to a renowned musical heritage making it a titan among symphony orchestras for the past 160 years. Stars like Lorin Maazel, Zubin Mehta, Claudio Abbado and, most recently, Georges Prêtre are only some of the renowned conductors who have taken up the baton for this extraordinary musical event. In 2009 the honor will for the first time go to the Israeli-Argentinean pianist and conductor Daniel Barenboim. The New Year’s Concert is now broadcast to 44 countries, with over a billion people tuning in to usher in the New Year with Austrian waltzes.

It is often the case in this country that the sense of tradition is spiced up with a large dose of innovation, and the Vienna Philharmonic is no exception. What other classical orchestra of this caliber is run democratically? Moreover, the Vienna Philharmonic has taken on the mission of making audiences aware of the humanitarian message of music. In 2005 the group was named Goodwill Ambassador of the World Health Organization, and since 2006 it has also been a global ambassador for “Hear the World”, an initiative by Phonak that aims to raise awareness of the problems of people with hearing defects.

The Lower Austrian Tonkünstler is another orchestra combining a rich tradition with a very forward-looking orientation. With new genres, creative concepts and extraordinary soloists, the ensemble is committed to appealing to both its regular audiences and a new, younger set of concert-goers. Its current principal conductor is one of the youngest in his field: Kristian Järvi, whose stage presence – or perhaps “stage show” is a more accurate term – approaches that of a pop star. In view of so much spirit, it is easy to forget that the Tonkünstler Orchestra just celebrated its 100th anniversary and is among the country’s oldest and most respected orchestras.

One of Austria’s most important symphonic groups is certainly the Vienna Symphony Orchestra. Its activities are by no means limited to the Austrian capital and to its regular concert series at the Musikverein and Konzerthaus. The orchestra also undertakes numerous tours throughout Europe and in overseas countries and every summer serves as “Orchestra in Residence” at the Bregenz Festival.

The prominent position Austria occupies in the music world often manifests itself in subtle differences. What sets the Viennese horn apart from its conventional cousins is that it is much trickier to play. The payoff is the instrument’s incredible tonal beauty, which is in part responsible for the legendary “Vienna sound”. A chamber- music group that is completely dedicated to this horn sound is the Vienna Horns. All members of the ensemble are leading horn players in major Austrian orchestras and use this type of Viennese horn exclusively.

After all this, it should come as no surprise that the acoustics in Austrian concert halls are superb – first and foremost, of course, the magnificent Golden Hall of Vienna’s Musikverein. Although this hall is considered something of an acoustic wonder, the marvelous resonance is due less to a miracle than to a great deal of architectural ingenuity. “If it was only a question of the Golden Hall of the Musikverein, the invention of the microphone wouldn’t have been necessary,” wrote Austrian poet Hans Weigel on the 100th anniversary of the building. The Golden Hall is also quite splendid in visual terms – to the extent that in 1870, at the building’s opening, critic Eduard Hanslick even brought up the question of whether the room “was not too sparkling and magnificent for a concert hall”. No one asks that question today. To the contrary: the opulent furnishings and the elegant ambience of the city’s venerable concert halls – be it the Hofburg, the Konzerthaus, the Kursalon or one of the many Viennese town palaces – are what make a concert here such an unforgettable experience.

The days when musical life in Austria’s provinces was limited to Salzburg and its festivals are long over. Linz has its Brucknerhaus, an outstanding concert center with tremendous acoustics built in 1974 directly of the banks of the beautiful blue Danube. This is also the home of the Bruckner Orchester Linz, one of the country’s leading symphony orchestras. Even newer is the Festspielhaus St. Pölten, a generously dimensioned complex opened in 1997 and featuring four halls suitable for events of all sizes.

Austria, of course, also offers opera enjoyment of the highest order. Aside from the two major opera houses in Vienna – the State Opera and the Volksoper – the charming Graz Opera is also well worth a visit. Its auditorium, with its neo-Baroque and neo-Rococo design, is considered one of the most beautiful in the entire world. This is where some of the world’s biggest opera stars began their career, among them the mezzo-soprano Angelika Kirchschlager. In the Austrian capital, the Theater an der Wien is again operating as an opera house: since 2006, the theater has been staging operas twelve months of the year using the “stagione” system. The cast remains the same from the first to the last performance – and therefore the high quality as well.

As one can plainly see, it was for good reason that opera diva Anna Netrebko has not only become an Austrian citizen, but has also made this country the base for her musical activities. Where else would the world’s most famous opera singer live if not in the “land of music”?

The most famous event venues:

Vienna Musikverein:

Legendary is the Golden Hall, where the Vienna Philharmonic’s traditional New Year’s Concert takes place each year.

www.musikverein.at
www.osterklang.at

Konzerthaus Vienna:

Spring Festival in March – May

www.konzerthaus.at

Linz New Music Theatre

With the new music theater, Linz has definitively established itself as a city of culture. Situated precisely between the “music capitals” of Salzburg and Vienna, Linz supports exciting architectonic and musical concepts.

Linz has finally had a music theater since 2013. And what a theater at that! The impressive 200-meter long building with its corrugated facade at the Linz folk garden is home to opera and operetta, ballet, the newly formed musical division and the Linz Bruckner Orchestra. According to the British architect Terry Pawson, this building should be more than just an opera house, but „a new living room for the city.“ In order to achieve this, one of the most modern theater spaces in Europe has been created which actually has a great feel good factor – even with 1,200 visitors in the Great Hall. The music theater has no fewer than four stages to offer. The so-called black box in the basement, whose stage has the shape of a half guitar, is dedicated to the musical treasures of children’s opera to contemporary music. Yet the new music theater is not just a concert location, but also an experience space. Outside the presentations, the public can get a playful overview of the house at any time in the KlangFoyer, where you can interactively discover the individual parts of the musical theater using tones. And the new music theater has one more peculiarity to offer: there isn’t any break over summer so combining a short break in Linz with a visit to the theater is ideal.

http://www.landestheater-linz.at

Whether in Graz, Innsbruck or Vienna: you encounter the legacy of Austria’s imperial past wherever you go in this country – but nowhere, of course, in such concentration as in the country’s capital, where you can sense this grand imperial atmosphere even when visiting one of the city’s many historic coffeehouses. The entire city centre is filled with traces of the imperial dynasty: the Augustinian Church on Josefsplatz was the venue for many Habsburg weddings, while the Imperial Crypt, beneath the Capuchin Church, served as the final resting place for the members of the House of Habsburg. Most visitors, however, are more attracted to the many magnificent palaces, such as the Baroque Schönbrunn Palace, which contains no fewer than 1,441 rooms.

Some 1.5 million visitors are drawn to the splendid salons and living quarters of the imperial family each year, but the elaborately laid-out grounds alone would be worth a visit. And the park attracts not only holiday guests; many Viennese also enjoy strolling through the gardens up to the elegant colonnade known as the Gloriette, where a coffeehouse offers stupendous views across the city, or spending a few hours at the world’s oldest zoo. The palace grounds are also where the annual summer concert of the Wiener Philharmoniker is held – an experience made unforgettable by the superb music and the sublime backdrop provided by the illuminated palace. And admission is free!

Imperial apartments can also be visited at the primary residence of the Habsburgs, Vienna’s Hofburg Palace. Particularly interesting insights into day-to-day imperial life are offered by the Silver Collection: the Habsburgs’ lavish dining culture alone illustrates what enormous expense was involved in running an imperial household of up to 5,000 people. The “Sisi Museum”, on the other hand, gives visitors a glimpse into the private life of the famous Empress Elisabeth. In addition to her dressing and exercise room, visitors can also view a reconstruction of the dress she wore on the eve of her wedding, her dressing gown and her death mask. These are all silent witnesses to a life that was ended tragically and violently with her assassination in 1898 – circumstances that undoubtedly contributed considerably to the “Sisi Myth”.

Considerably livelier is the ambience on the terraces of the former Festival Palace Hof, near the Danube River, when the Baroque Festivals held there transport the extravagant ‚joie de vivre‘ of that epoch to the present day. The opulent palace was originally built by the Habsburgs as a “princely reward” for Prince Eugene of Savoy to show their appreciation for his victory over the Ottomans at the Battle of Zenta in 1697. After years of decay and ruin, the palace was renovated at the turn of the millennium and restored to its original splendor.

Equally well preserved is the Imperial Villa in Bad Ischl, where the nobility spent their summers. As soon as the weather grew warm in Vienna, the Habsburgs escaped to the Salzkammergut – and everyone who could afford it followed their example. It all began in 1828 when the physician of the royal but childless couple Archduke Francis Charles Francis Charles Francis Charles Francis Charles Francis Charles Francis Charles Francis Charles Francis Charles and Princess Sophie of Bavaria advised them to visit the spa at the resort town to “take the waters”. The princess subsequently succeeded in bearing a child, who – as Emperor Francis Joseph – was himself to spend many summers at the Imperial Villa in Bad Ischl with his wife, Elisabeth. Today the Villa is open to the public and still retains the nineteenth-century ambience that was enjoyed by the emperor and his family. Even back in those days the Zauner bakery, an “Imperial and Royal Purveyor to the Court”, was pampering noble palates with its delectable cakes, and still today a visit to Bad Ischl would be unthinkable without a stopover at “Zauner”.

The Habsburgs established themselves in Tirol as well, but rather for political reasons than for relaxation and recreation: Emperor Maximilian I chose Innsbruck, the “Capital of the Alps”, as his residence because it was the ideal base for expanding his empire into what is now Western Europe. Today the legendary “Golden Roof” serves as a reminder of his reign: this loggia-like projection on the building’s second floor afforded a perfect view of the city’s main square and quickly became the symbol of Innsbruck. Maximilian’s Mausoleum, in the Hofkirche, is still considered one of the most important pieces of Renaissance in Central Europe. More of an insider’s tip is the Herzogshof in Graz, where the Habsburgs conducted their official business as sovereign princes of Styria: the building’s entire façade – over 220 square meters – was covered with murals on Greek-Roman mythological themes by the Baroque painter Johann Mayer. Whatever one might think of the Habsburgs, they certainly had exquisite taste, and one does not have to be a fan of the Austro-Hungarian Empire to take pleasure in their many cultural treasures.

The fascinating world of the Habsburgs

Vienna was the politically powerful and geographical center of Europe for five hundred years, just as long as the rule of the Habsburgs. With their palaces, government buildings and parks they left a substantial legacy in Vienna and the surrounding area. Under the family brand “Imperial Austria” this legacy is preserved and presented today in a timely manner.

The Imperial Apartments, the Sisi Museum and the Silver Room in the Vienna Hofburg, the UNESCO Cultural Heritage Schönbrunn Palace with its park and zoo, the Festival Palace Hof and the Court Furniture Depot provide fascinating insights into the multi-faceted history of the monarchy as well as the daily life at the imperial court with thematic walking tours, special exhibits, and individual focal points.

One of the main attractions of Vienna is the magnificent Ring Avenue with its huge building complex, the Hofburg. The imperial residence has undergone several expansions and revisions over the time and was the center of European power up to the beginning of the 20th century. It was from this palace that Emperor Franz Joseph, whose reign lasted 68 years, decided the fate of the Danube monarchy. The multinational state at the time was eight times as large as the present Austria.

With one single entrance ticket three different worlds of the Habsburg reign can be experienced: In the Imperial Apartments of the Hofburg, which nowadays houses the official offices of the Austrian Federal President, the Emperor’s family once spent the cold winter months. Today it is possible to visit the lodgings of the Kaiser and his wife Elisabeth (Sisy), which have been carefully maintained in their original state. Since time was a premium, also for rules of this period they also include semi-official rooms for audiences, conferences and offices. Two separate bedrooms reveal that at a certain point in time the legendary imperial couple no longer wished to share one bed. The beauty routine of Sisi, who was considered one of the most beautiful women, is reflected in her washroom and her exercise room. At the time it was considered revolutionary that an empress would have her own bathroom. Dining, taking tee, or eating breakfast took place in further chambers of the palace.

The immediately adjacent Sisi Museum is dedicated exclusively to the life and the legends surrounding the beautiful empress. After enjoying a free and unfettered childhood Sisy was made the fiancée of Kaiser Franz Joseph at 15. Later, at the court she resisted the required rigid rules of behavior and abhorred court intrigues. Her escape from these constraints took the form of a beauty and body cult that could hardly have been more extreme. After the suicide of her son she wore exclusively black. In 1898 she became the victim of an assassination. Her tragic and mythically exaggerated figure exudes to this day an ambivalent fascination. Among others, the legend is fortified by the “Sissi” film trilogy with Romy Schneider that is defined in the encyclopaedias as “regal kitsch” but is nevertheless so popular that it is shown on television every year at Christmas.

The Silver Chamber of the Hofburg displays a complete overview of the table manners and protocol of the monarchs. Numerous huge kitchen utensils are testimony to the amount of effort that went into cooking for 5,000 persons at the court. The craftsmanship of the royal purveyors by appointment is reflected in the delicate glass series, elaborately designed table service and silverware. Even the serviettes designed for festive meals can be admired. Some of the most exquisite pieces of tableware demonstrate that a gift of luxurious dining arrangements was common practice among rulers. Collecting porcelain was widely popular, whereby Asian objects were especially prized.

The most visited tourist attraction and true landmark of Vienna is Schönbrunn Palace. First erected as a hunting lodge with a large park, it was expanded to its present size from the middle of the 18th century and became the summer seat of the government and summer residence of the imperial family and the court. By the middle of the 19th century the palace and all auxiliary buildings were painted in “Schönbrunn yellow” that eventually became the trademark of the Habsburg monarchy. The entire ensemble with the palace, the park grounds with numerous fountains and statues, as well as the oldest still operating zoo in the world, was declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

Through the widely branching rooms of the palace many walking tours, longer or shorter, are possible. One can see the private rooms as well as the more representative and elaborately appointed public rooms. Among these are the apartments of Emperor Franz Joseph and his wife Elisabeth (Sisi) from the second half of the 19th century as well as the splendid apartments of Empress Maria Theresa from the 18th century that were appointed in Rococo style one hundred years earlier. The impressive heart of the palace, the grand gallery, is transversed on every tour. This is where balls, receptions and other court functions took place. Every chamber, every hall of the palace can tell a story – about life style and philosophy of the time.

Our journey now takes us a few decades back from the Rococo to the Baroque. The festival palace Schloss Hof, a short hour’s journey from Vienna beckons us to this period in the history of art. The former festival palace is a matchless ensemble of magnificent architecture and master gardening. With fastidious attention to detail this Baroque synthesis of art gives a completely new and contemporary view into a bygone world. Schloss Hof was conceived as a retreat, representative hunting lodge and opulent location for large festivals. The renovation begun in 2002 is considered to be one of the most ambitious revitalisation projects in recent history. With the help of old plans, inventory lists and paintings, the original beauty of the palace and its accompanying dairy farm, a kind of self-sufficient agricultural facility, was restored. Plants and animals of the time were also brought back to life. Some of the species of flowers are more than 200 years old and the kept animals represent the favourite animal races of the Baroque such as white donkeys and Carinthian sheep. The interior rooms of the palace open new windows into the world of Baroque. The palace offers a unified impression of the life style of another era. To fully take in this experience you will need at least half of a day.

Wonderful insights into the history of domestic life at the court are presented by the Viennese Hofmobiliendepot (court furniture depot). Originally founded to store the furniture of Empress Maria Theresa, the Hofmobiliendepot has advanced to become the largest furniture collection in the world. The German name, incidentally, derives from the concept of mobility, “Mobilien,” as opposed to “Im-mobilien” referring to real estate, i.e. that which does not move. And, in fact, the furniture was moved when the Kaiser moved from his summer residence to his winter residence or when he traveled – the furniture traveled with him. The main emphasis of the collection is the former original pieces of the furniture of the Habsburgs from Schönbrunn palace, the Hofburg, Belvedere palace, Laxenburg palace and Schloss Hof. The collection not only gives us a unique perspective into the world of imperial furnishings but an overview of the development of Austrian furniture design in the 20th century with exponents by Roland Rainer, Franz West or Margarete Schütte-Lihotzky.

LINKS:

Kaiserappartements, Sisi Museum, Silberkammer

www.hofburg-wien.at

Schloss Schönbrunn with park

www.schoenbrunn.at

Tiergarten Schönbrunn (zoo)

www.zoovienna.at

Festschloss Hof (festival palace)

www.schlosshof.at

Hofmobiliendepot (court furniture depot)

www.hofmobiliendepot.at

Prince Eugene’s Winter Palais

Although Prince Eugene was only a commander of modest stature, his Palaces were all the bigger, grander and magnificent, with the palace in the Himmelpfortsgasse being the oldest.

When Prince Eugene of Savoy died in Vienna in 1736, he was the most influential and richest man in Europe. However, when he arrived here in 1683, he was destitute. He remained there for more than a decade as the Kaiser didn’t want to take him everywhere – there, Eugene could prove himself in battle and get wounded as much as he wanted to. It was not until 1697 when he banished the Turkish threat in Hungary that he could have his splendid palace built in the center of Vienna with the associated higher salary (critics claim that he obtained the Sultan’s war chest). The best architects of his time were just good enough for this purpose: Johann Fischer von Erlach and Lucas von Hildebrandt. The architectural result in 1700 was a sensation throughout Europe and guests came from all over to pay a courtesy visit to the Prince in his Winter Palace.

Since autumn 2013, the carefully restored palace in the Himmelpfortgasse is now fully accessible to the public for the first time. The Baroque staircase is impressive with its mighty Atlases and an awe-inspiring Hercules. The stately splendour continues in the chambers. The Golden Cabinet is – as the name suggests – skilfully decorated with gold on the ceiling, and mirrors enhance the dazzling splendour.

The Belvedere – the Prince’s Summer Palace during his lifetime – now one of the largest art collections in the country, uses the Winter Palace for temporary exhibitions of Austrian art in an international context. In addition, the large-scale paintings of the Savoy Prince in the hall of battle paintings can be admired. The centre of the hall has „The Battle of Turin“, not just an impressive testimony of historical accuracy, but also a fun picture puzzle: a restorer painted a cyclist into the tumult of the thousands of warriors, presumably for fun, at the end of the 19th century – and he did so even though, at the time of slaughter, 1706, the invention of the bicycle was still a long way off…

www.belvedere.at/de/schloss-und-museum/winterpalais

Cultural and Theme Routes

Roads used to be for the sole purpose of getting from A to B. Today one can experience all sorts of interesting and delightful things while “on the road” on one of Austria’s theme routes.

Admittedly, the Styrian wine roads have long ceased to be an insider’s tip. But there is a good reason for this: the charm of southern Styria, combined with the region’s outstanding wines and the hearty local fare, is something that truly must be seen – and especially tasted. No less pleasurable is a trip along the wine roads of Burgenland, where – in contrast to their Styrian counterparts – the red wines are predominant.

Anyone who prefers to bask in the atmosphere of past centuries should consider one of the many theme routes devoted to Austria’s colorful history. Along the Styrian Castle Route, for example, one finds a total of eighteen castles and palaces from various periods, strung together like pearls on a necklace. The reason for this great density of castles in a relatively small area is simple: the south-eastern section of Austria once lay at the edge of the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation, and these intimidating structures thus served as a bulwark against enemies from the east. And they accomplished this well: most of these castles and palaces never fell into enemy hands. One of these fortresses that resisted the invaders is the 850-year-old Riegersburg, which looms up from the edge of a 482-metre-high, steeply sloped volcanic cone like something right out of a fairy tale. Today an elevator takes visitors up to what was once known as the “strongest fortress in the Christian world”, and the castle gates are open to everyone. As is the case with so many of Austria’s castles and palaces, at the Riegersburg the past is brought to life through vivid and imaginative dramatizations. The witch’s exhibition with old instruments of torture, for example, is sure to send shivers down the spines of not only the youngest visitors. There are also historical re-enactments on Walpurgis Night, at the end of April, and on summer full-moon nights, events in which witches and sorcerers have center stage.

The Habsburgs’ nearly 600-year domination of Europe had less to do with magic than with political skill. Today one can retrace the imperial family’s footsteps on the “Route of Emperors and Kings”: this old “royal road” from Frankfurt am Main to Budapest leads through the former heartland of the Austro-Hungarian Empire and along the Danube, passing the Baroque palaces, monasteries and splendid residences of what were once mighty cultural and dynastic capitals. Travelers on this route make some surprising discoveries along the way: only very few people know, for instance, that the Habsburgs had no fewer than sixteen magnificent imperial rooms installed at the Augustinian Monastery of St. Florian, ensuring that the imperial family had a comfortable place to lay their heads during their journeys. And although Austria’s oldest city, Enns, is not nearly as well known as the imposing Benedictine Abbey at Melk, visitors are invariably enchanted by the medieval charm of its historic center. One travels even further back in time on the Transromanica, which follows the ancient Roman trade route from Germany via Austria to Portugal, or on the Via Claudia Augusta, the first real road to cross the Alps. It is fascinating to find out all the things people hauled across the mountains even back then, such as oil from Spain, Cretan wine, fresh oysters, and spices from Asia. By the way, some hosts and hostesses along the Via Claudia Augusta even offer their present-day guests the opportunity to sample “Roman cuisine”.

But not only Austria’s rulers have left their mark on this country: many Austrian theme routes are devoted to the traditional arts and crafts of the local people. Thus on the Wood Road, in the thickly-wooded Murau area of Styria, one learns about the significance of regional wood as a building and manufacturing material and as an energy supplier, as well as its use in the making of musical instruments and in the visual arts. In Vorarlberg’s Bregenzerwald the Cheese Road, which links Alpine dairies, farms, restaurants and cheese shops, tells the story of the centuries-old tradition of cheese-making. Whether one is interested in arts and crafts, the country’s history, its culinary delights, or all of these things, it is a good idea to allow plenty of time when exploring Austria’s theme routes. After all, sometimes an entire world can lie between A and B.

A Tour through Austria

Austrian cities are always good for a surprise, even if one visits them regularly.A tour of the country’s cultural sights promises an astounding variety of experiences, impressions and pleasures that could scarcely be more different from each other.

Vienna can boast two UNESCO World Heritage Sites: the historic city center and the Baroque ensemble of Schönbrunn Palace and its grounds. One can find art treasures and magnificent buildings all over the former imperial capital. The most important “cabinet of art” in the world, the Kunstkammer in Vienna’s Kunsthistorisches Museum, takes visitors back in time to the Renaissance and Baroque ‚Kunst- und Wunderkammer‘ (chambers of arts and natural wonders) of the Habsburgs.

Austria’s youngest provincial capital, St. Pölten, can look back on a long history, with its town charter dating back to the twelfth century. One of the most striking features of the Lower Austrian capital today is its hypermodern government district, and directly adjacent is the equally modern cultural district with its futuristic Festspielhaus, where world-renowned musicians and dance companies perform regularly.

Linz, the capital of Upper Austria, is remarkable for the coexistence of traditional and contemporary architecture. This city, situated directly on the banks of the Danube, succeeds in blending art, science and technology to create an impressive synthesis. A host of modern buildings, such as the Ars Electronica Center, provide a stimulating contrast to the Baroque city center. The Lentos Kunstmuseum and the new Musiktheater are two other outstanding modern buildings and popular attractions for visitors to the city.

The Baroque city center of Salzburg, Mozart’s birthplace and home to the famous Salzburg Festival, was named a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1997. The cityscape is marked by numerous churches and palaces as well as the Baroque palaces of Mirabell and Hellbrunn. Salzburg Cathedral and the medieval Hohensalzburg Fortress are other architectural highlights. And visitors to Salzburg should not leave without taking some of the city’s sweetest souvenirs with them: the original Salzburg Mozartkugel.

What makes Innsbruck unique is not just its extraordinary location, surrounded by towering Alpine peaks. The Tirolean capital also features such world-famous sights as the Golden Roof (Goldenes Dachl), the art treasures in the Renaissance Ambras Castle, and the Court Church (Hofkirche). But the city also has its share of modern structures, including the Hungerburgbahn funicular railway and the Bergisel Ski Jump, both designed by the famous architect Zaha Hadid.

The history of Bregenz began as early as two thousand years ago, when a Roman settlement was located here. Today the main feature of the town center is the medieval St. Martin’s Tower, crowned by a sixteenth-century onion-shaped dome. The shoreline of Lake Constance is dotted with impressive modern buildings that represent a harmonious addition to the townscape: the Festspielhaus, the Kunsthaus and the new “vorarlberg museum”, which opened its doors in 2013.

It is the Carinthian capital’s Baroque and Jugendstil façades, lovely arcaded courtyards, and narrow passageways that lend the picturesque historic district of Klagenfurt its Mediterranean charm. The Jugendstil-era Stadttheater is not only the southernmost theater in the German-speaking world but also an architectural gem of extraordinary elegance.

Graz, Austria’s second-largest city, is home to two UNESCO World Heritage Sites: the old town, as the largest medieval historic district in all of Europe, and Eggenberg Palace. In 2011 the Styrian capital was also designated as a “UNESCO City of Design”, placing it among the world’s most creative and future-oriented cities. Architectural examples of this are the Kunsthaus and the Murinsel.

In Eisenstadt, the capital of the province of Burgenland, the visitor will encounter one name again and again: Joseph Haydn. The composer spent over forty years as music director in the service of the Esterházy Princes. Esterházy Palace, the city’s landmark, is the venue for concerts by world-class artists throughout the year. The scenic area surrounding the city is also well worth exploring: it is marked by extensive vineyards and features numerous wineries.

Jugendstil and modernity

At the beginning of the twentieth century Vienna was a European centre for applied arts, partly due to the Wiener Werkstätte, a workshop founded by Josef Hoffmann and Koloman Moser following the model of the British “Arts and Crafts” movement.

The Wiener Werkstätte helped create an entirely new culture of taste, and its success led to the establishment of branches abroad (in the Czech cities of Karlovy Vary and Marianske Lazne, as well as in Zurich, New York, and Berlin). It was also in this period that artists of the Vienna Secession created their own t was also in this period that artists of the Vienna Secession created their own t was also in this period that artists of the Vienna Secession created their own t was also in this period that artists of the Vienna Secession created their own t was also in this period that artists of the Vienna Secession created their own t was also in this period that artists of the Vienna Secession created their own t was also in this period that artists of the Vienna Secession created their own distinctive Austrian version of the style known throughout Europe as “Art Nouveau”. In Austria it was called Jugendstil, and its most famous representative was Gustav Klimt.

Architecture with an International Flavor

Austria’s reputation as a nation with a great cultural tradition is due not only to its music, literature and art: this country also boasts many towering architectural achievements. As in every other artistic field, interaction and exchange with other cultures has always been crucial to the further development of Austria’s architecture.

The scene at the building site of Salzburg Cathedral in 1620 must have resembled a kind of Tower of Babel: there were local laborers, soldiers from all over Europe who had been separated from their units, and at the very center an Italian master builder who directed the entire project with great élan. Santino Solari was evidently a very busy man at that time: he not only oversaw the rebuilding of Salzburg Cathedral but was also charged with renovating the entire fortifications of the city. In the ensuing decades, many other Italian architects followed Solari’s lead and came here to lend Austria the Baroque splendor for which it is still famous today. In Vienna, Filiberto Lucchese worked on the church at Am Hof and on the Leopold Wing of the Hofburg, Carlo Antonio Carlone rebuilt Upper Austria’s St. Florian Monastery as a Baroque masterpiece, and Domenico Martinelli infused the Liechtenstein Garden Palace with splendour and dignity.

In the Baroque period, princes and bishops bought architects in much the same way as football clubs buy foreign players today, and building à la italianità was all the fashion. One builder who left a particularly enduring mark on Austria was the Genoa-born Johann Lucas von Hildebrandt. Hildebrandt came to the imperial capital in 1696 and went down in architectural history as the builder of Belvedere Palace, the Church of St. Peter, Schwarzenberg Palace, Laxenburg Palace, Hof Palace in Lower Austria, and Mirabell Palace in Salzburg.

This unparalleled cultural exchange can be attributed to the artistically-minded Emperors Leopold I, Joseph I and Charles IV, but they were motivated by concrete political interests as well: they were determined not to be outdone by the magnificent buildings of their French arch-rival Louis XIV, the Sun King, and thus had their own splendid Baroque prestige buildings, such as Schönbrunn Palace, erected. The Baroque unquestionably filled the veins of Austrian architecture with fresh blood. For too long, the country’s builders had worked in isolation, without permitting any Mediterranean influences to “flavor” their work. The Baroque era marked the beginning of a cultural exchange that also included new trends emanating from Austria.

With the advent of Viennese Classicism and the magnificent buildings commissioned by Empress Maria Theresa, Austrian architecture spread to the crown lands. Austria’s influence became even more significant in the second half of the nineteenth century: in the entire empire, now Austria-Hungary, the cities had begun to expand. Bit by bit, the city walls were razed, boulevards, plazas and squares were built, and new districts were made accessible to meet the housing needs of a growing urban population. And the model for this development was Vienna, where the splendor of the imperial capital was manifested in the Ringstrasse and its grand buildings. The most renowned architects in all of Europe were brought here by the Habsburg court, among them Gottfried Semper, who had previously worked in Dresden and Zurich, and Theophil Hansen, a Dane who had fell under the influence of Classical architecture while studying and working in Athens and came to incorporate Greek and Romans elements into his work. In this period, the cities of Prague, Brno, Cracow, Lviv, Trieste, Zagreb, Bratislava and Budapest were given a “makeover” as well – and everywhere the so-called “Francis Joseph Style” became established, with its enormous administrative buildings, museums, opera houses and concert halls.

An artistic style that originated in Vienna and came to have a considerable influence on Europe and even America was Jugendstil (1890–1910). Today, the floral style of Viennese Jugendstil can still be seen on some of the residential buildings lining the city’s Naschmarkt and on the Secession building with its characteristic gold dome.

Austria has experienced a remarkable architectural awakening in the past twenty years, and visitors can experience this as well when they visit futuristic buildings such as the Kunsthaus in Graz, the Lentos Museum and Ars Electronica Center in Linz, and the hypermodern government district in St. Pölten. The province of Vorarlberg has become a center for innovation as well as the source of a new style of timber architecture that has spread all over Europe, one that aims for a symbiosis with the surrounding landscape, with the history of the region, and with the identity of the region’s inhabitants. After all: “People do not exist to serve architecture – architecture exists to serve people”.

Plain Postmodernity – Austrian Architecture

In 1967 Austrian architect Hans Hollein published his creed under the title: “Everything Is Architecture”: architecture, he wrote, is no longer perceived as a separate art form in its own right but has blended with the culture of daily life within the given scenic and social context. Prophetic in its day, this formulation has long since become reality.

In terms of tangible history, Austria’s major architectural attractions are an open invitation to travel back through the ages. The country is strewn with castles, palaces and monasteries, silent witnesses to a colorful past, much of it moulded by ecclesiastical culture. The medieval centers of numerous small towns afford a vivid glimpse of daily life in bygone centuries. In Vienna, finally, the wealth of opulent public architecture testifies to the city’s erstwhile status as the capital of a vast empire.

Contemporary architecture in Austria will bear comparison with that in any other country. It is an indication of the country’s sense of style and the sensitivity with which its everyday culture has been moulded. The stylistic tendencies range from minimalism and reductionism to deconstructivism and are manifested in both public spaces (like Vienna’s Museum Quarter) and private buildings (like those commissioned by, for instance, young vintners or major business enterprises). At the same time Austria has long been a pioneer of ecological building. While the architectural themes may vary from province to province, the buildings in question share a common concern to relate to the natural surroundings and/or to the existing architecture. Burgenland’s summers are generally hot, its winters cold, which makes it an ideal wine-producing region. It is here that Austria’s most pungent reds and its sweetest white wines mature. Burgenland’s vintners (like the Esterházy Wine Estate) are making a name for themselves as progressive builders, by putting up exciting contemporary structures among the vineyards or commissioning sensitive refurbishments of and extensions to their wine estates. Carinthia with its mild southern climate and its invitingly warm bathing lakes looks back on a tradition of Mediterranean building styles. Lakeside villas and bathing huts emanate an old-world atmosphere.

Some of today’s building is on a more visionary scale, like Günter Domenig’s “Steinhaus” on the shore of Ossiacher See, a now famous example of postmodernist deconstructivist architecture. The Hypo-Alpe-Adria Bank Head Office, another deconstructivist design, radiates an open, visionary excitement. Lower Austria is a treasure trove of architectural discoveries, an intriguing juxtaposition of revitalized historic buildings, adapted edifices from the time of the industrial revolution, and contemporary architecture. A stroll through the Old Town of Krems can become a time warp to the Middle Ages, while the town’s Kunsthalle exhibition facility brings you right back into the present. Lower Austria’s most spectacular architectural gem is undoubtedly the Loisium, a sprawling multimedia wine museum with an adjoining designer hotel, the work of architect Steven Holl. Equally thrilling in its own way is Grafenegg’s “Cloud Tower”. By way of a contrast Equally thrilling in its own way is Grafenegg’s “Cloud Tower”. By way of a contrast with the palace building in the historical-eclectic style, the expressively folded Pavilion projects skywards, serving as a sculpture, an open-air stage and a recreational space in one. Throughout its history, from medieval times to the present day, Upper Austria has always produced outstanding architecture, as witnessed by the historic Old Towns of Wels, Steyr, Schärding, Gmunden and by a wealth of monasteries and fine old churches.

The province’s outstanding contemporary building is the Lentos Art Museum beside the Danube in Linz, an incisive building with clear-cut lines, a kind of larger-than-life 130-metre wide bridge harboring a space for art that reflects the waters of the Danube. Until Lentos was inaugurated in 2003, Linz’s Brucknerhaus, a concert facility with “floating” concert halls dating from the 1970s, was the first contemporary building of note in the Upper Austrian capital. Salzburg is widely associated with the term “Baroque” which is loosely applied to the sum total of churches, palaces and squares that Mozart knew in his native city.

Several outstanding examples of contemporary architecture document the other face of Salzburg and the way it perfectly supplements its historical legacy. One instance is the Museum of Modern Art on Mönchsberg, looming over the Old Town like the fortress of Hohensalzburg. Restrained and unfussy from the outside, it provides a generous space for the art of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Styria harbours an exceptionally lively architectural scene to this day. What began in the 1960s as a rebellious generation of architecture students is now known as the “Graz School”, and the revolutionaries of yesteryear have long since turned into renowned architects and teachers. Günther Domenig holds a chair at Graz University, Michael Szyszkowitz teaches in Braunschweig, Manfred Wolf- Plottegg is a university professor in Vienna, Klaus Kada in Aachen. The latter recently caused a sensation with his imposing design of Graz’s Stadthalle. The spirit of the Graz School has spread to the city’s urban planners, which explains why the new Kunsthaus modern art facility designed by the British team Cook and Fournier is a planned vision that has taken on concrete shape. This building (familiarly dubbed “The Friendly Alien”) and Vito Acconci’s Island in the Mur are incontrovertible evidence that what architecture has hitherto dreamt of can be built. In recent years mountainous Vorarlberg has established itself as a Mecca for architecture enthusiasts. In the last four decades a wealth of fine functional buildings has gone up. Since the 1990s the European architectural community has started to take note of Vorarlberg.

A pioneer in the field of sustainable building, Vorarlberg has established a technical edge in the field. The most conspicuous features of contemporary building styles here are the rational use of resources, simple and constructively conceived ground plans and materials, and also a continuity that goes back directly to local traditions. The traditional buildings of the Bregenzerwald region are notable for their cautious use of the existing materials. Moreover, Vorarlberg’s architecture could not have got where it is today without craftsmen traditionally open to novel solutions. Technical innovations and sophisticated production processes have emerged as a result of the collaboration between design and crafts. Architecturally versed visitors never fail to marvel at the simple but perfected detailed solutions and the consummate skill evident in the working of wood. For several decades now Tirol’s neighbours in Vorarlberg have been demonstrating how appealing unfussy architecture can be. The Tyroleans have now caught the building fever. Given that Tyrol is known for its hospitality, most of the exciting new buildings here cater to the needs of visitors. One highlight is Zaha Hadid’s Bergisel ski jump, a futuristic structure that has come to be known as the “Innsbruck Lighthouse”. Visitors can go to the top of the tower to enjoy the superb view of the Inn Valley from the platform or the restaurant.

Further evidence of Tirol’s determination to foster contemporary architecture includes the new Hungerbergbahn mountain railway in Innsbruck, and the branches of the MPreis supermarket chain, which have gained numerous architectural awards. The nation’s capital, Vienna, has an almost unparalleled range of well- preserved historic buildings. This is a considerable challenge for contemporary architects, whose work has to stand side by side with history. That the city has mastered the leap into the twenty-first century with aplomb is testified by, for instance, the new Donau city Skyline and the Museum Quarter. A specifically Viennese aspect of architectural culture is the adaptation and enlargement of existing buildings. The resultant achievements in the field of interior architecture have made their mark worldwide.

Symphony No. 1

A trace of melancholy and painful beauty pervades Gustav Mahler’s Symphony No. 1. Mahler’s unmistakable tonal intonation is already completely formed in this work, and he was fully aware that he was charting new territory with his music. As he wrote to an old friend with regard to his Symphony No. 1: “You are probably the only one who will find nothing new about me here; the others will certainly be surprised about some things!” Indeed, the first performance, in 1889, after four years of work on the composition, was greeted by the public with boos.

Symphony No. 2

Mahler composed the Symphony No. 2 over the course of six years, completing the greater part of the work in the summers of 1893 and 1894 in Steinbach am Attersee. Mahler added soprano and alto soloists and a mixed choir, and used texts by the German poet Friedrich Gottlieb Klopstock, verses from “Des Knaben Wunderhorn” as well as his own poetry. Mahler himself reported that, after months of searching, the decisive inspiration came to him at the memorial service for the conductor Hans von Bülow. “The mood I felt as I sat there thinking about the deceased was so in keeping with the spirit of the work I was carrying around with me. The choir, in the organ-loft, sang Klopstock’s Resurrection chorale. It was like a flash of lightning, and everything became plain and clear in my mind! […] It is always the same with me: only when I experience something do I ‘compose’, and only when composing do I experience anything!”

The premiere performance, in 1895, which was financed completely by Mahler, was received poorly by the critics, but it was a resounding success with the public and sealed Mahler’s fame as a composer.

Symphony No. 3

Mahler’s Third Symphony, which he began in 1892 and completed largely in the summers of 1895/96 in Steinbach am Attersee, is in every way a monumental, intimidating work. The juxtaposition of disparate moods and various musical idioms gave rise to a wide variety of contradictory interpretations. Mahler himself characterised his Symphony No. 3 – and with it his entire symphonic oeuvre as well – with the words: “For me, a symphony means using all the technical means at my disposal to create a symphonic world. The constantly new and changing content determines its form by itself.”

Symphony No. 4

After his two preceding symphonies, Gustav Mahler again surprised – and perplexed – the audience in 1901 at the first performance of his Symphony No. 4. The work, which was composed at various places in Bad Aussee, Maiernigg and Vienna, appeared to be a complete departure from his previous symphonies: a turn of direction away from late-romantic pathos and toward a more classical formal language. Thus, the Fourth Symphony represents not only the culmination of the preceding symphonies, with their close ties to the poetry of the “Wunderhorn” songs; it also is a direct continuation, as the “epilogue in heaven”, of the Third Symphony. “It contains the cheerfulness of a higher world, one that is foreign to us,” wrote Mahler, adding, “and one that, for us, has something horrific and ghastly about it.”

Symphony No. 5

By 1901 Gustav Mahler had established firm work habits: during the year he worked as the director of the Vienna Court Opera, while in the summer months he devoted himself to composing. He wrote his Fifth Symphony in 1901 and 1902 in Maiernigg am Wörthersee, in the small “composing cottage” that offered the quiet Mahler required for his work. With the Symphony No. 5, Mahler for the first time wrote purely instrumental music, without using texts or poetry as a model. In 1902 he married Alma Schindler, and something of the happiness of these early years is reflected in the Adagietto, for strings and harp. Nevertheless, a deep fissure seems to extend through this work, with the contrasting moods clashing roughly and abruptly against each other. This work presented its composer with tremendous challenges. Right up until his death, Mahler continued to make changes to the score. But the demands Mahler made on his listeners were, as usual, also extreme. Following one performance, he made the resigned comment: “The Fifth is a cursed work. No one understands it.”

Symphony No. 6

“Wie gepeitscht” (“as if whipped), “Wie wütend dreinfahren” (“attack furiously”), “Wie ein Axthieb” (“like the blow of an axe”) were a few of the performance instructions Gustav Mahler wrote in the score of his Symphony No. 6, which he composed in Maiernigg in 1903 and 1904. There is ample evidence that Mahler intended this work to be his “classical symphony”; however, this composition, as well, ended up far beyond the horizon he had visualized at the outset. Of this symphony, Mahler said: “My Sixth will propound riddles the solution of which may be attempted only by a generation which has absorbed and truly digested my first five symphonies.”

Symphony No. 7

The concept that music is linked to dreams and the unconscious, and thus capable of expressing truths that lie beyond reason, is one that shaped the entire Romantic movement. But at times the music in Mahler’s Symphony No. 7, which he composed at the Wörthersee in the summers of 1904/1905, is more reminiscent of Goya’s etching “The Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters“. Nonetheless, from its deepest despair, the music always finds moments of transfigured serenity. The musician, wrote Mahler, is like a sleepwalker. “He knows not which path (perhaps along the edge of dizzying chasms) he is treading, but he follows the distant light, whether it is the eternally shining star or an alluring will-o‘-the-wisp!”

Symphony No. 8

In the summer of 1906 Mahler left for Maiernigg am Wörthersee “with the firm resolution of idling the holiday away and recruiting my strength. On the threshold of my old workshop the Spiritus creator took hold of me and shook me and drove me on for the next eight weeks until my greatest work was done.” The premiere performance of the “Symphony of a Thousand” was an event like none other before it in the history of the performance of his works, bringing Mahler his first great success since the performance of his Second Symphony. Mahler himself wrote of the work: “… it is the greatest thing I have ever created … Try to imagine the whole universe beginning to ring and resound. These are no longer human voices, but planets and suns revolving.”

Das Lied von der Erde

In a time of grave personal crises – in 1907 Mahler’s daughter Maria died, and that same year Mahler was diagnosed with a congenital heart defect – Gustav Mahler was determined to cheat fate himself. Beethoven, Schubert, Dvořák and Bruckner had each written only nine symphonies before they died, so instead of beginning work on a ninth symphony, Mahler, always a great adherent of mysticism and miracles, started a setting of ancient Chinese poetry rendered into German. The result was what Mahler called “probably the most personal composition I have created thus far.” These are songs of a desperate love of life, of existential loneliness, of death and leave-taking, but also of the certainty of another world we sense behind the visible one.

Symphonies No. 9 and 10

While Mahler’s physical strength was gradually ebbing, his creativity was reaching a final pinnacle. The Ninth Symphony was the only symphonic work of this size that Mahler completed in a single year – 1909. The introductory Andante is the most extraordinary piece of music that Mahler ever composed. The final, exhausted disintegration of the orchestra is followed by a reprise of the initial motifs in the brass and tympani, portents of disaster and death. Numerous notes in the draft of the score indicate that Mahler associated this work with memories and thoughts of parting: the first movement is inscribed with the words: “Oh days of youth! Vanished! Oh love! Scattered!”, and “Farewell!, Farewell!” Mahler did not live to hear his Ninth Symphony performed.

Mahler completed only drafts and sketches for his Tenth Symphony before his premature death at the age of 50.

Mahler’s Wife: Alma Mahler-Werfel

Alma Mahler-Werfel is one of the most fascinating as well as one the most controversial women of the 20th century. Her biography reads like a who’s who of intellectual life from turn-of-the-century Vienna to the years of exile in the US.

Born in Vienna in 1879 to the landscape painter Emil Jakob Schindler and the singer and actress Anna von Bergen, Alma became the stepdaughter of Carl Moll, one of the founders of Vienna’s Secession, after her father’s death in 1892. Following a two-year rapturous relationship with Gustav Klimt, she fell passionately in love with Alexander von Zemlinsky, with whom she studied musical composition. At the age of 23 she married Gustav Mahler, who was nearly 20 years her senior. Shortly before Mahler’s death she engaged in an affair with the architect Walter Gropius, later the founder of the Bauhaus, whom she married after Mahler died, and after she had pursued a tumultuous three-year sexual relationship with the painter Oskar Kokoschka. She deceived her second husband with the writer Franz Werfel, with whom she lived for ten years before they married. Together with Werfel she emigrated to the US in 1938. Thomas Mann described her during this period as “la Grande Veuve”, and the “Grand Widow” dedicated her years in exile to overseeing the musical legacy of Gustav Mahler and writing her autobiography, “And the Bridge is Love”. She died in New York in 1964 at the age of 85.

Alma Mahler-Werfel, whose hunger for socialising was legendary, maintained a “salon” in her villa in Vienna as well as at her summer retreat in the mountain resort of Semmering, and continued this tradition later in California and New York. Her circle of friends and acquaintances included the writers Arthur Schnitzler, Hugo von Hofmannsthal and Gerhard Hauptmann, and the composers Hans Pfitzner, Alban Berg and Arnold Schoenberg. Ernst Krenek and Elias Canetti found her repugnant, and she engaged in intrigues against Wassily Kandinsky as well as Thomas Mann, who nevertheless held her in high esteem, and whose family members were frequent visitors to her home. The biologist Paul Kammerer, who had the habit of kissing his toads at public appearances, and who took his own life following a scandal, fell ardently in love with her, and in the final years of her life she and writer Friedrich Torberg corresponded extensively.

Rarely has a person been the subject of such conflicting judgements as Alma Mahler-Werfel. She herself left behind numerous contradictory accounts of events. Only with regard to her appearance and demeanour does there seem to be general consensus. Tall and attractive, she possessed a nearly magnetic allure that only few were able to resist. While Alma Mahler-Werfel always attracted strong men to whom she could subordinate herself, she quickly assumed the role of the caring mother, who tended to the needs of her “men-children” and blossomed when they were dependent on her support. Although she was married to two Jews and had numerous Jewish acquaintances, she became notorious for her many anti-Semitic slurs. Basically shy and, on top of this, extremely hard of hearing, she concealed her inhibitions behind an air of extreme self-confidence. She masked her tendency toward depression confidence. She masked her tendency toward depression confidence. She masked her tendency toward depression confidence. She masked her tendency toward depression confidence. She masked her tendency toward depression confidence. She masked her tendency toward depression confidence. She masked her tendency toward depression confidence. She masked her tendency toward depression confidence. She masked her tendency toward depression with socializing, absentmindedness and alcohol. In the soul of Alma Mahler-Werfel, passion and sensuality alternated with coldness and calculation, and she remarked repeatedly that her insides were void, and that she did not really care about anything or anyone.

Alma Mahler-Werfel was the muse to numerous artists. She attracted artistic creativity in an almost magical way, but it was also one of her outstanding characteristics that she spurred these artists to produce their very best work. However, there was always something that left her unfulfilled. In her youth Alma Mahler-Werfel received extensive musical training and composed a large body of works, only some of which have been preserved, before Gustav Mahler put an end to her musical activities when they were married. She complied with this prohibition, although she cultivated the legend of this composing ban throughout her whole life. And still, there seems to be no one less suited to sacrificing herself for the sake of others than Alma Mahler-Werfel, and perhaps this is the reason for the make- believe life that she constantly complained of having to lead.

glass

Wine tasting without Riedel-stemware? Today it is unthinkable not only in Austria, but in France, Italy or the United States. The story of success began in Bohemia, now a part of the Czech Republic, where Johann Christoph Riedel was born in 1673. No one at the time could have known that this was the hour when one of the largest glass works in the world was born. Eleven Riedel generations have led this family enterprise successfully into today’s world. The exclusive mouth-blown glasses are made in the Tirolean Kufstein. The countless forms and variations demonstrate the approach to innovation, to producing the quality of glasses that are the perfect companion to fine wines, and to tradition. The eminent wine authority, Robert M. Parker, expressed it well in Time magazine: “The Riedel family has never stamped its name on a single bottle of wine. But over the past 50 years, this Austrian clan of master glass-makers has done more to enhance the wine gourmets’ pleasure than almost any wine-making dynasty.”

porcelain

The ancient tradition of porcelain production is also closely related to the culture of eating and drinking. One of the largest porcelain producers in central Europe is located at lake Traunsee in the Upper Austrian Salzkammergut: the famous Gmundner Keramik company. On a guided visit to the workshops you can look over the shoulders of potters and porcelain craftsmen at work and experience first-hand how a unique hand-made piece of original Gmundner Keramik emerges from an unassuming piece of clay. Each of the 500 different exemplars has to be worked upon at least 60 times by hand on the way to becoming a completed specimen. In this way the Gmundner Porcelain Works produces piece for piece, with loving care, just as it did 300 years ago.

Not far from Gmunden, at the turquoise blue Attersee, the Gollhammer company represents the true connoisseur’s concept of Salzkammergut porcelain. The creations of Gollhammer are many and varied: “The language of design,” according to the company chief Hans Mitterbauer, “derives from a philosophical foundation: It is our challenge to keep up with the times and its demands while respecting the grand porcelain tradition of the Salzkammergut. We need to be modern and appealing.” This endeavour can be seen best at the company headquarters, the 300 year-old Aichergut in Seewalchen that Mitterbauer saved from demolition and then restored. On a tour through the spacious showrooms and the painters’ studios, one can see first-hand that in fact each individual piece is made and decorated by hand. There are no stencils, no prototypes. Every single stag incorporated into the Hubertus emblem is unique; each rack of antlers just a bit different, each cup, each plate one of a kind.

“Fired fortune” of a different kind is produced in the old trading center of the city of Steyr: There the Keramik-Manufaktur Sommerhuber has been responsible for creating cosy warmth for your home – since 1491. Rudolf Christian Sommerhuber, a leader in the production of tiles and ceramic surfaces knows exactly why the porcelain tiled stove is more than just a source of heat than “The heat radiated by ceramic tiles is long-wave infrared radiation, and is very similar to the heat produced by the sun. The tiled stove is the grandfather of all infrared sources of heat. Ceramic tiles have the capacity to store heat and release it slowly and ity to store heat and release it slowly and ity to store heat and release it slowly and ity to store heat and release it slowly and ity to store heat and release it slowly and evenly,” says Sommerhuber whose workshop has generated relaxing summer warmth during the Alpine winter – for over five hundred years!

blue-dyeing

Even older than stove building is the art of blue-dyeing. Today is blue Monday in the blue printing house Wagner in Bad Leonfelden: On this particular Monday the Wagner couple is happily at work. The tradition of dying tissue blue is far older than blue jeans; it has existed for over one thousand years. And why, of all colours, the colour blue? “Blue-dyeing,” says Karl Wagner, “is the only technique that dyes using cold wash, which we call “Küpe.” The dark colour renders clothing soil resistant. Besides, the local dyer’s woad and later the Indian indigo were also relatively inexpensive dyes. However, simply dyeing something blue is not responsible for all of the linguistic metaphors for the colour blue. It is probably more the art of “blue printing,” a somewhat misleading distinction, since it is not a question dyeing blue but quite the opposite. What is printed is that which has been separated from the dyeing process. The patterns used by the Wagner family derive from tradition and have been handed down for centuries. “Every pattern has a specific symbolic meaning or was designed to identify a profession.”

The wood models and patterns of the second Austrian blue printer are also hundreds of years’ old: In central Burgenland, in the town of Steinberg-Dörfl near the Hungarian border there is the dyer works Färberei Koó, a small family owned business. Josef Koó is is the last dyer master in Burgenland who prints with hand presses and rollers and dyes fabrics with vegetable indigo: “Our speciality is the double prints with separate patterns on either side. These are produced with an old hand operated pressurised roller machine,” says Koó. Wagner and Koó meet every year at the dyers’ market in Guttau. Do they see each other as competitors? Wagner laughs: “Our competitor is the wood worm.” That’s because the wood models are up to 200 years old and sooner or later will be infected with wood worms.

shoes

Truly without competition is the “Goiserer” shoe: They already adorned the feet of Emperor Franz Joseph and are worn today by kings. They have even weathered the competition of the wildest concerts of the outrageous Hubert von Goisern band. True to tradition the shoes are hand-made in Bad Goisern. A stool facing the wooden work table, stirrups, the shoemaker’s hammer, nails and countless bands – the workshop differs little from the one that existed at the turn of the century.

“Craftmanship remains craftsmanship,” says Rudolf Steflitsch-Hackl, who took over the family enterprise as “Rudolf III.” He is still a royal supplier. He delivers shoes to the royal houses of Greece, Sweden, and Denmark. It is widely known that prominent politicians, businessmen and royalty hunt and hike in his tailor-made footwear. He names no clients, however. “My clients deserve discretion.” Therefore, the “golden,” – green, actually – books in the workshop with the foot moulds remain securely guarded. Only the sketches of the half shoes of the pop star Hubert von Goisern, size 45, are made available for viewing by the master. “Goiserer shoes simply belong to Hubert. And besides, his grandfather was shoemaker in our shoemaker shop.

Somewhat less elitist but just as respected is the GEA-Schuhmanufaktur in Schrems in the Waldviertel region. The design is classic and timeless. The manual production process demands the highest attention to detail. In the elaborate method of producing the shoes with flexible stitching the upper leather is attached to the leather middle sole with a seam. Company chief Heini Staudinger pays special attention to quality at a fair price. “One thing must be clear – a shoemaker in Austria can succeed only by producing a quality product.” This quality also has a human ly by producing a quality product.” This quality also has a human ly by producing a quality product.” This quality also has a human ly by producing a quality product.” This quality also has a human ly by producing a quality product.” This quality also has a human element. All employers are on a first name basis and the highest salary is only twice as high as the lowest. Manager Staudinger, who is also personally engaged in aid to Africa, reports in his own words that his salary is in the middle range.

diverse

Apart from these and other enterprises there are a number of small, even very small, workshops redefining the balance between tradition and innovation. Some of them are organized in “master malls,” a grouping of old workshops producing products reaching from Austrian folk attire, to hat and lederhosen makers and even to an optician who designs ultramodern eye glasses – made of antler ivory. A pair of eyeglasses not from the rack, but of the rack. Every rack of antlers is different,” says Manfred Pamminger. “For that reason alone each pair of eyeglasses is different.”

Unique specimens of another kind are produced by Walter Grübl and Herbert Klieber in Eben in the province of Salzburg. Both of these men are the last quill embroiders, who adorn swatches, belts, knife sheaths, barrettes, coin purses, mens’ braces, and leather bound albums with their artistic embroidery. The raw material of the quill embroiderers is the tail feathers of the peacock that are dropped once per year. These quills are especially long and are split into millimeter wide segments. “The belts and bags that are made as we do it are a fundamental part of traditional Alpine fashion,” says Walter Grübl. He is especially proud of the wide, ornately embroidered belts that are worn over lederhosen. At one time these belts were worth the value of up to two cows, at a time when cows represented a huge investment. “Adorning oneself with borrowed plumes,” that is, with those of the peacock was a status symbol. That is still true today. Photographs in the workshop display the proud ski stars Michael Walchhofer and Hermann Maier with their lederhosen belts made in the Salzburg quill embroiderer workshop. These symbolic images reflect a stunning contradiction: these champions of the fastest times in the world are wearing works of craftsmanship that were produced in a painstakingly slow process. Timeless.

LINKS:

Riedel Tiroler Glashütte GmbH Weissachstraße 28 A-6330 Kufstein/AUSTRIA Tel.: +43 (0) 5372 – 64 896 Fax: +43 (0) 5372 – 63 225 www.riedel.com

Gmundner Keramik Keramikstraße 24, A-4810 Gmunden Tel.: +43 (0) 7612 786-0 Fax.: +43 (0) 7612 786-99 www.gmundner-keramik.at

Gollhammer im Aichergut Kapellenweg 7 A-4863 Seewalchen am Attersee Tel.:+43-7662-22466-0 www.gollhammer.at

Keramik Sommerhuber Resthofstr. 69 A-4400 Steyr Telefon: +43/7252-893-0 Telefax: +43/7252-893-210 www.sommerhuber.com keramik@sommerhuber.com

Blaudruckerei Wagner Kurhausstraße 11 4190 Bad Leonfelden http://www.blaudruck.at/

Original burgenländischer Indigo-Handblaudruck Blaudruckerei Koó Neugasse 14 7453 Steinberg Burgenland, Österreich Tel.: +43 (0) 2612 8471 www.originalblaudruck.at

Rudolf Steflitsch-Hackl Konzessionierter orthopädischer Fachbetrieb (authorised orthopaedic company) Spezialerzeugung von Berg-, Sport- und Jagdschuhen A-4822 Bad Goisern 47 Tel.: +436135/8227 • Fax: +436135/8227 http://www.goiserer.at/

Waldviertler Schuhwerkstatt (shoe maker) Niederschremserstr. 4a 3943 Schrems info@waldviertler-schuhwerkstatt.at http://www.gea.at/home1st.html

http://www.meisterstrasse.eu/home

Salzburger Federkiel-Stickerei (quill embroiderer) Walter Grübl und Herbert Klieber Edtsiedlung 207 5531 Eben im Pongau Telefon: +43 (0) 6458/8300 www.federkiel.at

It is the combination of what he calls this “aristocratic” green sensibility along with a new environmental awareness triggered by global warming and globalization that makes Austria the world’s most environmentally friendly country today, continues Strigl. “Seventy per cent of our power comes from alternative energy,” he says. “And 60 per cent of all waste is recycled. We are a recycling world master. It’s been like this for ten years, and there’s not much more we can do to make it better.”

But when it comes to eco-tourism, Austria’s deep-rooted environmental awareness has perhaps let it down. While other destinations have been quick to tell the world about their latest sustainable tourism initiatives, Austrians haven’t felt compelled to emphasize what has always been an inherent part of their lives. In fact, Austria is one of the world’s best destinations for sustainable tourism, as recently recognized in the World Economic Forum’s Travel & Tourism Competitiveness Report.

SUSTAINABLE LUXURY Holidays are a time for relaxing and enjoying oneself, for escaping the everyday grind and endulging in whatever it is you enjoy best, whether it’s gastronomy, history, culture, reading a book in the sun or something more energetic.

However, for the environmentally conscious traveler this can be a problem. We’re told that in order to save the planet we have to be more careful. We have to watch what we use, look out for what we throw away, minimize carbon emissions and so on. With such restrictions, how can there be room for endulgence, relaxation and luxury? If we’re honest about it, most holidays will always weigh in on the negative side of the sustainability equation if we are to have any chance of enjoying ourselves.

But it doesn’t have to be this way. In Austria, a progressive eco-tourism infrastructure allows you to enjoy a perfectly relaxing, endulgent holiday while protecting the planet – effortlessly.

Take Vienna’s Hotel Imperial. Built as a residence for the Prince of Württemberg in 1863, it has always been renowned for its elegant luxury. However, it has recently taken steps to reduce its waste and energy consumption. Recycled, biodegradable paper is standard, as are energy efficient light bulbs. Using hot air from the air-conditioning system and kitchen extractor fans to supplement the central heating has reduced hotel’s energy consumption by five per cent. And water consumption has been cut by the same amount by limiting the flow rate on taps in the bedrooms and kitchens.

Set among stunning forest-clad mountains on the shores of the emerald green Lake Fuschl, the Schloss Fuschl Hotel has more reason that most to look after the environment. Here, the heating and hot water systems are powered by vegetable oil, and the air conditioning system is regulated using water drawn from the bottom of the lake at a year-round 3˚C. “Luxury quite often means wasting energy and producing garbage and things like that,” says general manager Wolfgang Greiner. “In our way I think we’ve found a pretty good [way] to run a luxury property that is environmentally friendly, that is conscious about it and is a true luxury hotel without wasting energy.”

Heated entirely from thermal springs and designed to blend in with the verdant hills of Styria, the luxury Rogner Bad Blumau hotel and spa shares this idea of maintaining a Styria, the luxury Rogner Bad Blumau hotel and spa shares this idea of maintaining a Styria, the luxury Rogner Bad Blumau hotel and spa shares this idea of maintaining a Styria, the luxury Rogner Bad Blumau hotel and spa shares this idea of maintaining a Styria, the luxury Rogner Bad Blumau hotel and spa shares this idea of maintaining a balance with nature. But it also has a broader, more holistic approach to sustainability that has helped to transform the economy of what was once one of Austria’s poorest communities. “People used to move away from the area to find jobs because they didn’t see any future in the village,” says general manager Hannes Czeitschner. So working with local people has always been an important part of what we do.”

As a result, 80 per cent of the food served – including milk, cheese and yoghurt, as well as fruit and vegetables, beef, honey and pumpkin seed oil – comes from local farmers, all of whom now work to organic standards. And 90 per cent of the staff come from within a 50-km radius. “It’s all part of the same idea really,” continues Czeitschner, “to integrate what we are doing here harmoniously, whether we’re talking about the architecture and the local landscape, energy consumption and climate change or the business and the local economy.”

AFFORDABLE SUSTAINABILITY In the UK, sustainability and environmental awareness often seem to be the preserve of the priveledged. But in Austria, there are a huge number and variety of affordable places to stay – from B&Bs and guesthouses to campsites and mountain huts – for the environmentally conscious visitor.

More than 180 have achieved the standards of the Östereichische Umweltzeichen – Austrian Eco-label – a government run scheme that attaches particular importance to efficient waste and energy management, easy-to-use recycling systems, minimizing the use of packaging and using seasonal, local, organic food, sustainable materials in bedrooms and ‘soft chemistry’ to clean bathrooms.

It’s the same story up in the mountains. In fact, Austria has the largest number of eco- friendly mountain huts of any country in Europe. The 40-bed Adolf Nossberger hut in Carinthia’s Schober Mountains is one of 63 that have achieved the prestigious Austrian Alpine Association’s Seal of Environmental Excellence. It uses solar-charged batteries to power low-energy light bulbs, sustainably sourced wood for heating and a combination of filtration and composting to process toilet waste.

It goes without saying that owner Roland Hummer sources food from local suppliers and minimizes the amount of packaging that he uses. However, it seems he will stop at nothing in his quest for sustainability: during the summer months, he lugs 20kg of supplies up the mountain three times a week in order to reduce the number of helicopter flights needed to supply the hut.

For many Austrians who have a traditional respect for the environment, remaining close to nature is an integral part of protecting it, and there are countless opportunities to experience Austria’s natural beauty and a traditional way of life.

Farm Holidays in Austria, for example, offers strung-out city dwellers the chance to relax, unwind and reconnect with nature. “Our farm holidays enable visitors to experience a slower pace of life,” says Patricia Lutz, marketing executive at Farm Holidays in Austria, “where people still make bread, cheese and butter in the traditional way and live their lives according to rhythms of nature – dictated by their animals, the seasons, the weather and so on.” There are almost 900 organic farms to choose from, including 77 health and wellness farms and another 87 where sustainability is to a high standard.

Of course, one of Austria’s major attractions is its extraordinary natural beauty. And with more than 60 per cent of its landscape covered by forests, wetlands and grasslands and almost 30 per cent of it protected, there are no shortage of opportunities to experience this first hand. Visitors to the Great Walser Valley Biosphere Reserve in the western province of Vorarlberg, for example, can not only enjoy superb high Alpine hiking in summer and skiing in winter, but also enjoy the tranquil atmosphere of picturesque villages such as Sonntag and Fontanella where local residents maintain a peaceful, traditional way of life in perfect harmony with nature.

ECO INFRASTRUCTURE However, the idea of sustainable tourism goes beyond simply offering you a low impact hotel. Several Austrian towns and villages are promoting the concept of car-free holidays and low-traffic or vehicle-free zones. At the Alpine resorts of Werfenweng, Neukirchen am Grossvenediger and Hinterstoder, for example, subsidised shuttle buses are on hand to transfer visitors to and from the train station and hiking and cycling trails. Solar powered cars and electric bicycles can be hired at minimal cost, and guests are also provided with free mobile phones with which to hire taxis.

But it’s not just the tourist resorts which offer opportunities for low-impact travel. Many of Austria’s cities are converting their public transport to clean fuels. Graz in Styria is leading the way, the first city in the world to have converted its entire municipal bus fleet to biodiesel.

Environmentally conscious visitors to Salzburg have it easy in a city where the volume of waste sent to landfill has been reduced from almost 100 per cent to just 15 per cent in the last 15 years. The same is true in Vienna, which aims to reduce the figure to two per cent and where concerts, festivals and other public events now use reusable glasses and cups.

In fact, so high are Austria’s everyday environmental standards, that a break there could redefine the meaning of ecotourism altogether to become the term used to describe a holiday where visitors have an opportunity to find out what life could be like in a world where sustainability is a reality.

Case studies

Grosses Walsertal, a dramatic, V-shaped valley cloaked in forests of ash, beech and fir and lush Alpine meadows of herbs and wildflowers, offers one of the clearest examples of the traditional respect there is for nature throughout rural Austria. Indeed, it was on account of the role its inhabitants play in maintaining its stunning mountainous landscape that the region was designated a UNESCO Biosphere Reserve in 2000.

UNESCO recognised that the key to this finely balanced relationship is dairy farming, which the valley’s inhabitants – the Walser – have practised here ever since they emigrated from Switzerland in the 13th century. “Living here as a farmer is living in a circle, working in a circle,” says Kurt Stark, who manages a traditional dairy in the pretty village of Sontagg and comes from a long line of dairy farmers. “And as long as we keep rearing our cattle and making cheese, we will always have our beautiful meadows.”

Whereas in many parts of the world nature protection is about fencing people out, in Grosses Walsertal the farmers effectively act as landscape gardeners, he explains. “In the summer months, we work hard to manage the high Alpine meadows so that our cattle have the best environment in which to graze.”

This work involves removing seedlings to make sure the forest doesn’t encroach, he continues, and clearing away rocks and boulders that come down during the winter. It certainly seems to pay off. In some of the high pastures, scientists have identified more than 80 different species of wildflower, herbs and grasses in every square metre.

This diversity in turn supports the local culture. “There is marvelous depth of flavor and a richness in the milk produced by cows grazing up in the high meadows in the summer,” says Elizabeth Burtscher, who has lived in the region for more than 50 years. “And you can taste this in the special character of the butter, yoghurt cheese that we produce here in the valley. It’s like the difference between making a soup with a potato and some salt, and making it with 20 different types of herbs and vegetables.”

Burtscher is one of a growing number of women in the valley who with the support of UNESCO have been reviving another traditional practice: herbalism. Burtscher runs Berg Tee, which sells wonderful herbal tea blends, and offers tours to visitors interested in collecting herbs and wildflowers for their own blends. And the Alchemilla Project is a cooperative of herbalists who make a variety of cosmetic and therapeutic products, including balms, oils and tinctures, as well as foods and drinks.

“The biosphere reserve has helped us retain our natural and cultural heritage here in the valley by supporting the small dairies so the farmers can continue to graze their cattle and manage the landscape, which in turn means we still have these wonderful meadows full of our beautiful wildflowers and herbs.”

Wiener Festwochen

Making contrary sounds audible and visible in music, on theater stages and in the entire city is the aim of the Wiener Festwochen. But this event’s name also contains the word ”Fest”. And it is, indeed, a huge celebration each year in front of City Hall that kicks off this festival, which combines cultural experiences of the highest order with socially relevant themes and objectives.

Vienna is one of the leading cultural capitals of the world. With its rich artistic offerings, the Wiener Festwochen has in the sixty years of its existence earned an important place in the festival scene as an innovative event with an emphasis on joint projects with international artists and featuring a wide variety of genres: opera, theater, concerts, performance art, and installations.

A large number of places throughout the city serve as performance venues, ranging from the MuseumsQuartier — one of the world’s ten largest cultural complexes — and the Theater an der Wien to the Musikverein, Schauspielhaus and the city’s markets and squares. Classical and contemporary operas and concerts, legendary theater marathons such as Peter Stein’s recent adaption of Dostoevsky’s ”Demons”, and the Vienna Boys’ Choir singing in council-housing projects are as much a part of the festival’s programme as the annual ”Into the City” series, which aims at addressing various communities in Vienna and drawing them into the cultural activities of the city.

With ”Bed and Breakfast”, guest workers demonstrate their hospitality, while ”A Long Night at the Naschmarkt” not only features musical performances at the market but also takes a look at the people who work here. The Wiener Festwochen therefore not only acts as a mirror for this city’s love of culture and high festival spirits, but also promotes an openness toward other cultures, including the cultures represented in this very city.

Dates: May/June www.festwochen.at

Jazz Fest Wien

Jazz at the Opera: when for two weeks during the summer the stalls and boxes fill with exuberant audiences and the sounds of jazz resonate throughout the imposing stage area, the annual Jazz Fest has once again taken over the Vienna State Opera.

Herbie Hancock has been here, as well as Keith Jarrett, Oscar Peterson and the ”Father of Bossa Nova”, João Gilberto. And because the organizers of Austria’s largest jazz event are not too fussy about the boundaries of the genre, Juliette Greco and Ray Charles as well. They have all graced the stage of the Vienna State Opera, built between 1863 and 1869 as one of the first monumental structures on the city’s Ring. It is not only the great jazz stars who appear here and the undogmatic programming of the event but also the extraordinary performance venues that create the special atmosphere of the Jazz Fest Wien. For the entire summer the square in front of City Hall is transformed into a landscape of culture and international culinary delicacies. The courtyard of the imposing City Hall is where jazz legend Joe Zawinul celebrated his 70th birthday, Gilberto Gil enthralled the crowds and the stars of the Vienna’s downbeat scene jammed until the break of dawn. An off-beat open-air venue is the Spittelau district-heating facility, designed by Friedensreich Hundertwasser.

Another festival district is the MuseumsQuartier, one of the world’s ten largest cultural complexes, whose combination of Baroque façades, modern museums, galleries, excellent food, concert halls, dance stages and courtyards act as a wonderful oasis in the middle of a vibrating city. And of course there are the city’s established jazz clubs, such as Porgy & Bess and the venerable Jazzland.

Local musicians are a particular focal point of the festival organizers. Thus, the Jazz Fest Wien offers urban ambience with a mix of international and Austrian musicians, who each summer join forces to transform Vienna into a center of jazz.

Dates: June/July

www.viennajazz.org

ImPulsTanz — Vienna International Dance Festival

For five weeks each year, thousands of professional dancers, choreographers, teachers and students from all over the world turn Vienna into the dance capital of the world.

When at the end of the eighteenth century couples began twirling in three-quarter time in the dance halls of Vienna’s suburbs, it was still considered vulgar. But this could not halt the triumphant march of the Viennese waltz around the globe. Vienna has remained the waltz capital of the world, which is evidenced by the innumerable dancers one can observe on New Year’s Eve. And the waltz is, of course, also the opening dance each year at the glittering Opera Ball.

But the fact that Vienna is in the twenty-first century still one of the world’s dance capitals is due in large part to the ImPulsTanz International Dance Festival. Illustrious choreographers such as Wim Vandekeybus, Marie Chouinard and Mark Tompkins have presented their works here and remain closely tied to what is now Austria’s largest dance festival. The festival is also committed to the promotion of contemporary dance, and in 1996 the danceWEB project was launched. The networking of various European dance institutes is intended to provide orientation for dancers and choreographers and support for their artistic careers through scholarships, continuing-education programmes and co-productions.

Over the period of one month, ImPulsTanz presents forty productions at venues such as the MuseumsQuartier, the Schauspielhaus and the Akademietheater. Eighty instructors lead nearly 200 workshops with over 5,000 class registrations and 3,000 students.

In the series [8:tension] the contemporary dance establishment meets the trendsetting productions of tomorrow. Even after over twenty years, the ImPulsTanz festival remains focused on the constant search for new trends and movements in contemporary dance.

Dates: July/August

www.impulstanz.com

Grafenegg Music Festival

The combination of culinary pleasures, the atmosphere of the historic castle and landscape gardens, and the modern architecture, along with a world-class concert programme, makes the Grafenegg Music Festival a delight for all the senses.

A summer day in Grafenegg could go like this: after a visit to the castle — Austria’s most important historic castle complex, whose origins go back to the Late Gothic and Renaissance — you take a stroll through the English landscape garden. With your picnic basket, which was stocked according to your wishes at the picnic pavilion, you find a shady spot beneath the centuries-old trees, next to the goldfish pond or on one of the lawns in front of the castle. After so much relaxation, your senses are now free for fully enjoying a concert.

As a continuation of the tradition of the English landscape garden, which created places of pleasure nestled in the middle of nature, two prize-winning event venues were constructed in recent years at prominent locations on the grounds: the Cloud Tower and the Auditorium concert hall. The Cloud Tower juts into the sky like a giant sculpture and crowns the grandstands of Europe’s largest open-air arena, which also boasts outstanding acoustics. The castle, grounds, Cloud Tower, and Auditorium are in use throughout the entire year for events ranging from New Year’s concerts and Christmas programmes to concerts as part of the Grafenegg Music Summer. And Grafenegg Advent has long become an institution in Austria’s pre-Christmas season.

But the annual highlight is the classical-music festival, directed by Pianist Rudolf Buchbinder. This is where the world’s top orchestras, such as the Vienna Philharmonic and the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, conducted by the likes of Nikolaus Harnoncourt and Franz Welser Möst, encounter such superb soloists as Lang Lang. And mention should be made of the ”house orchestra” of the festival, of course: the superb Lower Austrian Tonkünstler.

The perfect way to wrap up the evening is a visit to the Castle Tavern or a dinner in the State Rooms of the castle. Enjoy prize-winning Austrian cuisine accompanied by fine wines from the nearby Wachau and Kamp Valleys or from the sunny slopes of the Wagram wine region.

Dates: August — September

www.grafenegg.at

Glatt&Verkehrt

Every year since 1997 artists from all over the world have been coming to Krems and vicinity to explore their own musical roots at an innovative, off-beat and often surprising festival.

Throughout history rivers have delineated borders while at the same time serving as connecting corridors for a variety of peoples and cultures. Even today the Danube links the East with the West and flows through ten countries on its way to the Black Sea. In Krems, located at one end of the Wachau Valley, one encounters at every step remnants of a millennium-old culture that has melded manifold influences to create a distinctive identity. What better place, then, could there be for a festival devoted to exploring one’s own roots and at the same time experiencing completely new musical worlds?

The term ”glatt und verkehrt” literally means ”knit and purl”, a knitting pattern that is a synonym for a harmonious structure, a surface that is smooth despite consisting of contrary elements. Austria’s largest festival for traditional music ”knits” together the old and the new, the traditional and the innovative from all over the globe.

The covered courtyard of the Winzer Krems winery, with its marvelous views of the city, the Danube and Göttweig Abbey, is the festival’s main performance venue While the sounds of Latin-American rhythms, hammered dulcimer or free-bass accordions fill the air in the courtyard and Finnish overtone singers, Tunisian oud virtuosos and the brass band from Krems take turns on the stage, fine wines emerge from the cellars and fine regional foods are served in the adjacent tent area. The Baroque Göttweig Abbey, perched high above the Danube, is the home of the music workshops, where for two weeks nearly everything is taught that is related to traditional and contemporary music. The arcade courtyard of the Minorite monastery in Stein, next to the Klangraum Krems in the Minorite church, is a charming new open-air venue for festival events. And when the apricot is the center of attention at the traditional Apricot Fair at Spitz Castle, Glatt&Verkehrt is also on hand, as it has been every year since 2001, to present some new folk music as a contrast to the age-old culinary traditions.

The initiators of the Glatt&Verkehrt festival are convinced that creativity has its roots in the exploration of one’s own origins as well as in encounters that transcend all borders. And the festival provides impressive proof of this year after year.

Dates: July

www.glattundverkehrt.at

Liszt Festival Raiding

Wunderkind, piano virtuoso, playboy and abbé, citizen of the world and self-proclaimed ”gypsy musician”. Franz Liszt’s music is as versatile and contradictory as its creator. In 2011 Burgenland celebrates the composer’s 200th birthday.

Beyond the last foothills of the Sopron Mountains the land becomes flat and the sky grows large. This is where Central Burgenland opens up to the Hungarian Basin, and the Pannonian climate ensures outstanding conditions for the wines produced in this region. The Blaufränkisch made here is characterized by a ruby-red colour and a spicy, fruity aroma.

It was in the middle of ”Blaufränkisch country” that Franz Liszt was born on 22 October 1811 in a former administration building of the royal Esterházy family, in the village of Raiding. This farm town, as well as the entire province of Burgenland, belonged at that time to the Hungarian half of the monarchy. Throughout his entire lifetime, Franz Liszt retained a close connection to his homeland and to the music of the region. Even after he had become famous all across Europe, he continued to refer to himself as a ”gypsy musician”.

The shingled house where Liszt was born still stands today and now serves as a museum. On the occasion of the founding of the Liszt Festival in 2006, the Franz Liszt Concert Hall was built directly adjacent to Liszt’s birthplace. Like the surrounding farmhouses, the Concert Hall, which was awarded the Architecture Prize of the Province of Burgenland, is a single-storey structure, and it seats 600 people — nearly the number of people who live in Raiding.

In celebration of Franz Liszt’s 200th birthday, Lisztomania 2011 presents a wide variety of exhibitions in Eisenstadt and Central Burgenland. Under the title ”Hear the light … see the sound”, artists from the many European countries in which Liszt performed joined forced in 2010 at Burgenland’s Cselley Mühle to focus on the relationship between music and the fine arts, as exemplified in the works of Franz Liszt. The results will be on display in 2011 in the Provincial Gallery in Eisenstadt, before the exhibition goes on tour through Europe. Liszt’s hometown of Raiding and the neighbouring parish church of Unterfrauenhaid will look at the origins and the early years of the composer as a child prodigy.

At the Franz Liszt Center Raiding, a series of piano recitals, orchestra concerts and vocal-music concerts illustrate the broad spectrum of Franz Liszt’s music. Commemorative concerts and cross-border projects that explore the work of Franz Liszt in a creative and innovative way with new works and improvisation round out the programme of the Liszt Festival. A special highlight can be experienced on 22 October, Liszt’s birthday, when Daniel Barenboim performs a selection of Liszt piano pieces.

Festival dates: January; March; June; October

www.lisztfestival.at

Opera Festival St. Margarethen

Great Opera in One of Europe’s Oldest Quarries. Bizarre rock formations on Europe’s largest natural stage form the impressive backdrop for opulent opera productions every summer.

For 2,000 years sandstone was extracted from one of Europe’s oldest quarries, thus creating a bizarre rock landscape that resembles a monumental opera stage set, and which today is a UNESCO World Cultural Heritage Site.

In 1996 the first opera performance took place here: Verdi’s ”Nabucco”, with Oriental-like landscape scenery as a backdrop. Europe’s largest natural stage was born. Staging opera productions that are popular while featuring a top-cast of singers, the festival now attracts over 20,000 opera lovers each year. A wide-ranging programme presents not only international opera stars but also jazz and pop greats in open-air performances. And the ”Children’s Opera” series stages a fairytale opera each year, giving young audiences, as well, the opportunity to immerse themselves in a world of magic and wonder.

Culinary delicacies are in abundant supply in the newly designed Foyer Park. The symbiosis between the chalk-rich soil and the advantageous microclimate resulting from the proximity to Lake Neusiedl create the conditions for the outstanding wines of the region, which are presented at a number of vendor stands. Every year a jury selects a ”festival wine” that is especially suited to the theme of that opera season.

It is the special magic of this location, along with the musical and culinary impressions, that make Opera Festival St. Margarethen such an unforgettable experience.

Dates: June to August

www.ofs.at

styriarte

Summer after summer Nikolaus Harnoncourt’s styriarte festival in Graz is the place to be when it comes to new interpretations of old masters.

It is the relentless intellectual curiosity that Nikolaus Harnoncourt has in common with his great-grandfather Archduke Johann. With his natural-history collections, the elder laid the foundation for the Joanneum Provincial Museum in Graz, while the younger was driven by his musicological passion to form the Concentus Musicus Wien, which under Harnoncourt’s direction revolutionized the performance of Renaissance and Baroque music. Harnoncourt’s artistic demands were also brought to bear on the standards for the performances of the styriarte festival, which was founded in 1985 in his hometown of Graz. Since that time, over a period of one month in the summer the Styrian festival offers fresh perspectives of our musical heritage and reflects the diversity found today in approaching the music between the Middle Ages and the Romantic period.

The splendid imperial Mausoleum; the Landhaus in Graz, one of the most magnificent Renaissance structures north of the Alps; the imposing Eggenberg Castle, the most important castle complex of Styria and modelled after the Spanish Escorial; and the historic city center of Graz, which has been named a UNESCO World Cultural Heritage Site; are only a few of the performance locations. For one event the festival leaves Graz for the town of Stainz. In this case, Harnoncourt is retracing his family history: Archduke Johann was not only the first elected mayor of Stainz; this was also the seat of the Counts of Meran, the direct descendents of Archduke Johann through his morganatic marriage to Anna Plochl, and a family of which Nikolaus Harnoncourt’s mother was also a member.

In addition to the Concentus Musicus Wien, conducted by Nikolaus Harnoncourt, and the Chamber Orchestra of Europe, regular guests at the festival include such early-music stars as Jordi Savall, Quatuor Mosaïques and Armonico Tributo Austria. At this festival, the artists hone works by the old masters with equal parts of relaxation and concentration, and each year inquisitive audiences descend on Graz to hear the results.

While the festival focused on individual composers in its early years, since 1992 the styriarte has selected a particular theme for each season. The 2011 edition of the festival opens with a semi-staged production of Smetana’s ”The Bartered Bride”, conducted by Nikolaus Harnoncourt.

Dates: June —July

www.styriarte.com

Carynthian Summer

The familiar and the unknown, the innovative and the traditional meet at the Carinthia Summer, whose goal it is to break free of the constraints of the conventional music repertoire.

That new music, if perfectly played, has the ability to captivate audiences is demonstrated each year by the Carinthian Summer. Austrian premieres, composers in residence, and — as a central element of the festival — the performance of a different church opera each year testify to the passion for innovation and experimentation that characterize this festival. Founded in 1969, the Carinthian Summer has a knack for skilfully mixing the familiar with the unfamiliar, and it is not unknown for a tango to find itself paired with a traditional Austrian folk song. For the festival organizers, the dialogue between composers, performers, and audiences is a vital factor, as are the classes and events for and with children.

In view of the quality and diversity of the Carinthian Summer’s programming, it is not surprising that the list of artists closely associated with the festival reads like a ”who’s who” of modern and classical music and includes names like Gottfried von Einem, Arvo Pärt, Zubin Mehta, Riccardo Muti, and Gidon Kremer.

No less diverse than the event programme are the performance venues. Ossiach Abbey, which dates from the 11th century and was furnished magnificently in the Baroque period, the mountain church in Tiffen, Günther Domenig’s avant-garde Steinhaus, the Gothic church of St. Martin in Feldkirchen, the Glanegg castle ruins, and the Congress Center Villach — the ”second home” of the festival — are locations that are determined to break away from the increasingly limited music repertoire favoured by most concert organizers.

The Carinthian Summer 2011 focuses on Darius Milhaud, whose staged cantata ”The Return of the Lost Son” continues the tradition of the Ossiach church opera.

Dates: July — August

www.carinthischersommer.at

Ars Electronica Festival

From trial balloon to worldwide success, what began as a pilot project has in the past thirty years become one of the world’s most important festivals for media arts, which each September turns the city of Linz into the capital of the cutting edge.

For nine days at the beginning of September it was to serve as the ”nucleus for new futures for the city”: the former Linz tobacco factory, Austria’s first large steel-framed structure, which closed down at the end of 2009. ”This is a trial balloon in every sense”, said event organizer Gerfried Stocker in advance. And a location with great symbolism for a festival that in 2010 again devoted itself to the interface of art, technology and society — this time with the exhibition ”Repair — Ready to Pull the Lifeline”.

With the selection of this location the Ars Electronica Festival once again remained faithful to its tradition of uncompromisingly turning its back on conventional conference spaces and cultural centers in favour of seeking an artistic-scientific discussion with the public. As part of the Cloud of Sound event and accompanied by a soundtrack by Peter Valentin, the train of the future was presented in a supersonic experiment. Chris Jordan pulled 2.4 million pieces of plastic out of the Pacific Ocean and arranged them to create an impressive picture, and the Japanese robot Asimo celebrated his Austrian debut. These are just three of over 200 individual events, designed with much imagination, idealism, and expertise, that are concerned with creating scenarios for an alternative future.

In its specific orientation and long-term continuity, the Ars Electronica is today a platform for digital art and media culture that is unique in the entire world. In addition to the festival, which was founded in 1979, it encompasses the Prix Ars Electronica as a scout for the newest trends in art and technology, the Ars Electronica Futurelab as a gateway to business and science, and the Museum of the Future in the new Ars Electronica Center.

Dates: September.

www.aec.at

Salzburg Festival

Salzburg lies in the heart of Europe, in the center between the South and North and the East and West of the reunited continent. But for six weeks a year Salzburg is the center of the world, when the most prestigious music festival on earth opens with a celebration on the city’s squares and streets.

Ninety years ago the Salzburg Festival was founded by Hugo von Hofmannsthal, Max Reinhardt and Richard Strauss as a peace project aimed at reconciling the peoples of a devastated Europe. It was to offer opera and theater, and of both, as Hofmannsthal put it, the very best. Today the Salzburg Festival is the most celebrated festival in the world, and the splendid setting for this jewel is provided by the Baroque city center and the surrounding area, which world traveler Alexander von Humboldt called one of the most beautiful landscapes on earth.

The performance schedule consists of opera, theater and concerts, and offers a broad spectrum ranging from Mozart — the festival’s genius loci — to the modern, from classic productions to avant-garde experiments, and from Hofmannsthal’s ”Everyman” to world premieres by contemporary playwrights and composers. Salzburg thus presents a wider range of styles and genres than any other festival, and everybody who is anybody in the arts world gathers every summer in the city whose architecture seems to have been created over a period of centuries for the sole purpose of hosting a festival.

Even ninety years after its founding the Salzburg Festival demonstrates an undiminished capacity for rejuvenation. New stage directors and conductors have been engaged, new plays and compositions performed, the performance schedule expanded and broadened and new performance venues acquired. New music has long been a focal point of the festival. And in 2010 the youngest ”Everyman” since the first performance of the work in Salzburg made his debut: Nicholas Ofczarek, with Birgit Minichmayr in the role of the Paramour, in a critically acclaimed and popular production. In 2011, in a monumental undertaking, the director Nicolas Stemann will stage both parts of ”Faust” on Perner Island.

Situated very close to the Alps and the scenic Salzkammergut lake region, Salzburg is the perfect starting point for daytime excursions out into the countryside. But by the early evening, the city’s streets and squares are again filled with elegantly dressed festival guests, and the air is filled with the very atmosphere that makes the Salzburg Festival so extraordinary. Then the Festival Hall, theaters, churches and Cathedral Square all become the stage for a festival whose philosophy, in the words of Hugo von Hofmannsthal, is: ”Dramatic acting in the strongest sense”.

Dates: July-August

www.salzburgerfestspiele.at

International Jazz Festival Saalfelden

Jazz on the Mountain, the imposing Alps, deep-green mountain pastures and a lovely lake form the backdrop for Europe’s most important festival for contemporary jazz.

Salzburg is a bustling place in summer. After all, this is the time of the Salzburg Festival. The SommerSzene, held at the same time, addresses a completely different audience. Then there is the Jazz Festival in Saalfelden, which endeavours to offer fans a type of music that is honest, unaffected and a bit rough. It strives to be a place for experimentation, where the most innovative playing can be heard. The Jazz Festival Saalfelden has long established itself as a worthy counterpart to the Salzburg Festival — in the field of contemporary jazz.

What began in 1979 in a horse barn has long since established its main stage at the Congress Saalfelden. There are also concerts in the Kunsthaus Nexus and free performances in front of the Town Hall. All in all, the festival features four days of top-flight jazz in the middle of Salzburg Province’s spectacular Alpine scenery. So what could be more logical at this ”jazz summit” than to take the music up to the mountain pastures as well? The culinary offerings at the Steinalm and Vorderkühbühelhof Alpine farms, the old Leogang smithy, and the Huggenberg mountain inn ensure that one does not have to haul heavy picnic baskets. The mountain concerts are also free of charge.

The festival organizers consciously try to interpret the term ”jazz” as flexibly as possible and allow space for innovative projects. The stylistically diverse programme encompasses traditional sounds as well as modern trends in jazz, with an emphasis on experimentation and cross-genre projects. And these offerings attract audiences that are not afraid of engaging in new listening experiences.

Dates: August

www.jazzsaalfelden.com

Innsbruck Festival of Early Music

In the Renaissance and Baroque, Innsbruck was one of Europe’s most important centers of music. The Innsbruck Festival, the oldest existing festival for early music, carries on this tradition.

As the royal seat of the Habsburgs from the late Middle Ages well into the Baroque period, Innsbruck attracted the most celebrated musicians of the day. Masters like Paul Hofhaimer, Heinrich Isaac, and Pietro Antonio Cesti were all active as court musicians in the Tyrolean city, and the first freestanding theater in the German-speaking region was the site of splendid opera performances.

Since 1976 the Innsbruck Festival of Early Music has been carrying on this grand tradition. As one of the most renowned festivals of its kind, the Innsbruck event attracts the most illustrious artists of the early-music scene, including Nikolaus Harnoncourt, John Eliot Gardiner, Alan Curtis, Jordi Savall, Sigiswald Kuijken and long-time festival director René Jacobs. In addition to the famous original-instrument ensembles, opera stars such as Jennifer Larmore and the countertenor Derek Lee Ragin are also regular guests. Since 2010 Alessandro De Marchi has been artistic director of the Innsbruck Festival.

The festival is accompanied by a varied supporting programme. Backstage events provide a glimpse behind the scenes, and at the lunchtime concerts in the Hofgarten visitors can eat and drink while enjoying the music. Musicians playing festive processional music fill the city’s squares, just as they did in the days of the Tyrolean archdukes. And the golden age of the Renaissance is brought back to life during the Castle Fest at Ambras Castle, while at the ”Long Night of Music”, ancient music can be heard from sundown until daybreak.

Ambras Castle, with its famous Spanish Hall, a light-flooded gem of Renaissance architecture; the Giant’s Hall in Innsbruck’s Hofburg, which Maria Theresa had designed in the Viennese Rococo style; the Silver Chapel of the Hofkirche and numerous other historic venues all serve as the settings for opulent opera productions and performances by renowned ensembles.

In 2011 the festival opens with Georg Philipp Telemann’s only surviving opera seria: ”Flavius Bertaridus, König der Longobarden.” Under the direction of Attilio Cremonesi, Johann Adolf Hasse’s opera ”Romolo ed Ersilia” will be staged 245 years after its first performance, which also took place in Innsbruck. The ”BAROQUE OPERA YOUNG” series will this year present Francesco Cavalli’s ”La Calisto”.

Dates: Innsbruck Festival of Early Music August Ambras Castle Concerts July

www.altemusik.at

Bregenz Festival

Opera on the Lake, with the Bregenz Festival an evening of opera begins long before the conductor lifts his baton, when guests are brought over the water to the floating stage by ship — and thus become part of the spectacle themselves.

It must have been the city’s splendid location directly on Lake Constance and the beautiful surrounding area that in 1946 gave a few resourceful people the idea of building a stage on two anchored barges, thus laying the foundation for the Bregenz Festival. From the very beginning the lake and the lovely natural surroundings were intended to play a central role in the opera productions. Now, over sixty years later, Austria’s cultural life would be unimaginable without the Bregenz Festival, and the floating stage has long been the largest of its kind.

For four weeks each summer audiences in Bregenz experience monumental opera productions under open skies in a hitherto unknown intensity. It is therefore no wonder that in 2008, when the producers of the James Bond film ”A Quantum of Solace” were combing the earth in search of spectacular locations, they were bowled over by this setting. For two weeks the filming in Feldkirch and on the Bregenz floating stage, with its huge ”Tosca” eye, caused an unimaginable tumult in these two towns. The ”Tosca” production in front of 1,500 extras formed the background for the film’s key scene, while Puccini’s music delivered the dramatic soundtrack.

Opera performances in the Festspielhaus, orchestral concerts and guest appearances by theater troupes, contemporary works in the Workshop Theater, in the Festspielhaus, and in the Kunsthaus Bregenz, as well as numerous events as part of the ”cross-culture” young people’s series, complete the program of a festival for which the drama does not end at the stage ramp.

The fascination of the Bregenz Festival can be attributed to the combination of popular opera and a bold, edgy artistic profile. This is evidenced by the gratifying balance for the 2010 season, which, in addition to the staging of Verdi’s ”Aida” on the floating stage, also presented a retrospective of the Polish-Russian composer Mieczyslaw Weinberg. This successful strategy is to be continued in the coming years.

In 2011 and 2012 Umberto Giordano’s ”André Chénier”, equal parts romantic drama and historic thriller, will be presented on the floating stage. A new series of world premieres of commissioned works will be kicked off by the opera ”Miss Fortune / Achterbahn”, by the British composer Judith Weir.

Dates: July-August

www.bregenzerfestspiele.com

Schubertiade

A musical respite from the daily routine. For over twenty-five years the Schubertiade has accomplished the seemingly impossible: retaining its intimacy while becoming the world’s premier Schubert festival.

Back when a circle of friends and music enthusiasts assembled around Franz Schubert to give house concerts — with Schubert at the pianos — and often undertake excursions out into the countryside, the term ”Schubertiade” was born. And this intimate character of Vorarlberg’s Schubert festival, in which the focus is completely on the music, comes very close to replicating the atmosphere of those historic events. Giving Schubert the place he deserves next to Mozart and Beethoven was the intention when the Schubertiade was founded over twenty-five years ago, and the uncompromising dedication to the art of Franz Schubert has remained.

With the renovation of Markus Sittikus Hall in 2005, the Schubertiade was able to return to its original home of Hohenems after a fifteen-year hiatus. Schwarzenberg, a town of 1,700 inhabitants filled with the lovely shingled houses typical of the Bregenzerwald, has established itself as the second festival venue. Set in the midst of lush, green Alpine pastures, extensive forests, and the rocky outcroppings of the surrounding mountains, the Angelika Kauffmann Hall, with its simple wood construction, is regarded as one of the very best chamber-music halls in all of Austria.

The beautiful Alpine setting, offering opportunities for both relaxing strolls and demanding hikes, and encounters with the world’s finest singers create the special magic of the Schubertiade. Chamber music and piano recitals are additional focal points. The programme is complemented by occasional orchestral concerts, readings and master classes. These are qualities that each year attract a loyal community of festival-goers who want to enjoy a musical event of world-class quality — a festival whose spirit and singular atmosphere make the guest artists, as well, eager to return to the Schubertiade year after year.

The 2011 Schubertiade will again attract a ”who’s who” of the music world. But another important festival tradition will also be continued: nurturing young talent by scheduling artists at the beginning of their career, giving audiences the opportunity to make some exciting new discoveries. The musical offerings range from Bach, Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, and Franz Liszt — whose 200th birthday is celebrated in 2011 — to Gustav Mahler and Hugo Wolf. And, of course, an abundance of music by Franz Schubert.

www.schubertiade.at

International Accordion Festival Vienna

The virtually limitless variety of the idiom of this underrated instrument sets the tone at the International Accordion Festival Vienna.

Accordion, squeezebox, Swiss organ, concertina, hand organ: the variety of names it possesses reflects the diversity of the construction and the musical language of this instrument, which is spotlighted at the month-long International Accordion Festival Vienna.

With this festival, the accordion returns to its roots, as it were. It was the Viennese instrument maker Cyrill Demian who first patented an instrument called ”accordion”. It quickly became an established component in the musical life of the city, taking its place alongside the two violins, contra-guitar and clarinet used to play the traditional ”Schrammel” music. From Vienna the accordion began to spread around the world, where it was adopted by a wide variety of cultures for their folk music.

Viennese folk music can be heard at the International Accordion Festival Vienna, of course, as well as styles ranging from klezmer and the French musette to zydeco. Performers from all over the world will also perform blues, chansons, contemporary music and jazz in churches, theaters, at the city’s MuseumsQuartier cultural center, and as part of the ”Gürtel Late Night Tour”, held in hip music clubs such as Chelsea and Rhiz. At the ”Silent-Film Matinee” series, accordion players perform live to provide the soundtrack to classic silent films, and kids of all ages can enjoy the ”Magic Afternoon” events. This festival promises unlimited musical enjoyment. As Austrian accordion virtuoso Otto Lechner says, ”The accordion is free!”

Dates: February — March

www.akkordeonfestival.at

wean hean

The ”Wienerlied” from Pop to Freud. This celebration of the ”Vienna sound” is not concerned with the stubborn preservation of the typical ”Wienerlied”, but with its continuing evolution.

”Listening to Viennese singers like Mizzi Starecek and Maly Nagl leaves me with the same affectionate feeling that I get from Bessie Smith when she sings slow ballads like ‘Far Away Blues’,” says Roland Neuwirth, the leader of the group Extremschrammeln. And he describes how a completely new musical world opened up for him — even more exotic than that of the old Mississippi blues — when he first heard vintage recordings of the Viennese song style known as the ”Wienerlied”, providing him with an adequate form of expression. It is due to pioneers like Roland Neuwirth that the ”Wienerlied” — like the city of Vienna itself — has become cosmopolitan, and today its influences range from jazz, blues, soul and pop to classical music.

The ”wean hean” (”vienna sound”) festival can take credit for bringing the ”Wienerlied” in from the Viennese suburbs every year and placing it completely in the spotlight — without losing any of its anarchy, offbeat wit, contrariness and edginess. Neurotic navel-gazing is still permitted, of course, and the ”Wienerlied” has on occasion even taken up residence on the couch at Vienna’s Freud Museum. But otherwise the festival is concerned with thinking outside the box, presenting the ”Wienerlied” sung in the Serbian language in seven-quarter time or in classic reggae style. Very popular are also the ”City-to-City Encounters”, in which the music of other cities is confronted with Viennese music.

In addition to showcasing such established stars of the scene as Roland Neuwirth, Karl Hodina, and Kollegium Kalksburg, the festival is also always on the lookout for new groups. The festival events take place at traditional locations like the Bockkeller, in Vienna’s Ottakring neighbourhood — the absolute epicenter of Viennese music — and rustic wine taverns known as ”Heurigen”, as well as at unexpected venues such as the jazz club Porgy & Bess, Schönbrunn’s Palmenhaus and the Technisches Museum. Regardless of the location, artists and audiences alike are invited to overcome the borders in their heads and risk a fresh look at the Viennese musical tradition.

Dates: May

www.weanhean.at

Loisiarte

Music and literature at the Loisium. From the middle of the vineyards rises the aluminium façade of American architect Steven Holl’s cube that is the Visitors’ Center Loisium. Opened in 2003, the stunning structure serves as a signal that the old wine-growing town of Langenlois is adept at linking the modern and the traditional. This theme is also taken up by the Loisiarte music and literature festival.

A perfect climate, ideal soil and a long winegrowing tradition make the Lower Austrian town of Langenlois something of a competence center when it comes to wine. The Loisium Adventure World of Wine invites visitors to experience the fascination of wine with all their senses. The tour leads through the 900-year-old labyrinth of old wine cellars and up to the atmospheric courtyard of a former wine estate before descending underground again.

Since 2006 this has also been the site of the Loisiarte: for four days in March, classical and contemporary music is combined with literature. Every year the festival devotes each event to one of the four points of the compass and features one Austrian composer as that season’s composer in residence, who is also greatly involved in the programming of that festival. Wine-tasting is, of course, a part of each concert, with the focus on a different fine Langenlois wine at each event. And afterwards the restaurant of the adjacent Loisium Hotel serves a special ”Cultural Pleasures” dinner corresponding to the theme of the event.

In the 2011 season the Loisiarte again takes guests to various parts of the world, this year with music and literature from the US, Brazil, Scandinavia and Austria. The composer in residence, Gerd Kühr, presents some of his own compositions and also features two students from his master class, who have composed works especially for the Loisiarte.

Dates: March

www.loisiarte.at

wellenklaenge. Lunz am See

From bathing to break-dancing. The crystal-clear waters of Lake Lunz and the forests and mountains of Lower Austria’s Voralpen region provide the backdrop for a festival that devotes itself to transcending all borders between styles and genres.

Evidence for the fact that art and nature can be combined with practical use and pleasure is provided by the Lunz-based artist Hans Kupelwieser with his award-winning floating stage on Lake Lunz.

The seating area, installed on a steep slope on the northern shore of the lake, blends naturally into the natural surroundings and, together with the floating stage, makes up part of the lake’s swimming area. Each evening for three weeks in July, the stage emerges from beneath the lake’s surface and the stepped sundeck is transformed into a covered seating area for the performance. There is something about this calm modernity, which merges so harmoniously into the surrounding scenery, that also contributes to the spirit of the wellenklaenge festival.

It has become a tradition for internationally renowned artists to meet with musicians of the region in the months leading up to the festival to develop the programme that is then presented at the opening concert. What emerges from this process is always new and different, and the only constant throughout the years is the ambition to take full advantage of the possibilities of the lake stage and the surrounding area, whether it is bringing the artists to the stage by boat, having trumpets play fanfares from the diving tower or utilizing the echoes that resound across the lake from the Hetzkogel mountain.

In Lunz, professional musicians meet amateurs, and international stars collaborate with area artists. This has contributed greatly to establishing the festival in the region. Hip hop artists are as much at home on the stage here as American singer-songwriters, the Christian Muthspiel Trio, Tristan Schulze, and the brass ensemble of the Munich Philharmonic. The wellenklaenge festival also features dance performances, breakdance acts, workshops, and readings.

Lunz, with its crystal-clear waters, is so lovely. And wonderfully calm. And with the wellenklaenge it has a small, wonderful, calmly exciting festival.

Dates: July

www.wellenklaenge.at

donaufestival

A festival of flights of fancy, the Donaufestival Krems is regarded as the festival for current artistic positions at the interface of performance and acoustic art, experimentation, pop and subculture.

It must be due to the river and the landscape on both shores, to the coming and going of various peoples in the course of the millennia, that this area possesses a heightened sense of awareness of its own roots and simultaneously an outlook that is open for new ideas. How else can the abundance of festivals in this region be explained, a region also equipped with a clear sense of tradition and an appreciation for encounters across all borders. In the series of festivals held in Austria throughout the year, the donaufestival is one of the first.

Easter is barely past when the donaufestival unpacks its surprises each year. The festival organizers give special emphasis to yet unknown artists and works as well as to a large number of productions created especially for the festival, and which can only be experienced here. But the event programme also always features plenty of internationally known stars: Rufus Wainwright presented one of his albums for the first time in Krems, the Melvins gave a legendary performance at the festival, and in 2010 the Peaches introduced their singular brand of techno punk to Austrian audiences. The Peaches also acted as a kind of curator in residence for that festival, participating in the programming and bringing several of their artist friends along to join them at the event in Krems.

Mind-bending psychedelic music and ear-blasting sounds from the noise-rockers Sonic Youth are as much a part of the donaufestival as ”discourse operettas”, music-film projects and experimental theater. In all, the donaufestival guarantees a modern and unconventional programme of events that is a refreshing departure from the mainstream.

Dates: April — May

www.donaufestival.at

Schrammel.Klang.Festival

World music from the Waldviertel. Litschau, Austria’s northernmost city, is the birthplace of the traditional ”Schrammel” music. The area surrounding the Herrensee and the Herrensee theater serves as the location for three days of Austrian folk music, sometimes conventional and occasionally eccentric.

It begins in the morning with a matinee in the festival tent and continues until late in the night: the three-day Schrammel.Klang.Festival, held on historic territory. This is where Kaspar Schrammel was born in 1811, the father of the Schrammel brothers, who created the style of ”Heurigen” and dance music that bears their name. It is thus only natural that the festival presents a wealth of Schrammel music in the classic instrumentation of two violins, clarinet and contra-guitar.

But that is not all: Roland Neuwirth and his Extremschrammeln, Kollegium Kalksburg, jazzy takes on Schrammel music by Wolfgang Puschnig and his band and countless other distinguished musicians who appear in Litschau testify to the lasting vitality of Schrammel music.

And because Schrammel music has long become a worldwide phenomenon, the Schrammel.Klang.Festival also features musicians from Asia and North and South America. But even the most diehard Schrammel fans need a break now and then, and there is no better way to relax than a dip in the refreshing water of the Herrensee. Or a hike in the rolling woodlands that give the region its name: the ”Waldviertel”. But be sure to return in time for lunch at the ”Schrammel Heurigen”, and then restrict your hiking to the ”Schrammel Path” leading to the natural stages surrounding the lake. Instead of the fragrance of the forest your nose will be filled with the smells of bratwurst and poppy-seed cake. Musicians perform on the main stage right on the lake until the small hours of the morning, and because this is, after all, ”Heurigen” and dance music, there is always plenty of wine flowing.

Dates: July

www.schrammelklang.at

Intern. Chamber Music Festival Lockenhaus

The Lockenhaus Chamber Music Festival, hailed by the New York Times as one of ”the two most refined music festivals of all”, transforms a village of some one thousand souls in Burgenland into the center of the chamber music world for two weeks each year.

Regarded in the eighteenth century as a specialist genre, ”the music of friends”,http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chamber_music – citenote-0#citenote-0 chamber music first attained a degree of popular prominence in the Vienna Classical school. In the Romantic period, beginning with the late works of Beethoven, it established itself as the preferred form for musical experimentation, and since that time chamber music has occupied a central position in the works of most composers.

The musicians who come together in Lockenhaus under the direction of Gidon Kremer find there ample space for joint experimentation. Ensembles often form at the festival just to play one composition, or established groups dissolve temporarily and reassemble with newly met musicians. The rehearsals are generally open to the public and offer the audience the chance to follow the development of a work from the first reading to the final performance, while also allowing them to meet the artists outside the concert setting. What will actually be performed at a given concert is only announced twenty-four hours in advance, a peculiarity that audiences have become quite fond of, and one that gives the festival its special workshop character. The concerts offer the classics of the chamber music repertoire as well as contemporary works and ventures into uncharted musical territory. Despite the intimidating diversity of this repertory, Gidon Kremer’s loyal audiences are eager to accept whatever he offers them. Since its founding in 1981 the festival has been organized primarily by the parish priest of Lockenhaus, Josef Herowitsch, with the vital assistance of many local volunteers. This is one reason why this chamber music festival has such a familiar feeling for both artists and listeners. Many joint activities such as barbecues and the now-legendary football match ”artists vs. organizers” underscore the community-like character of the event. With the Lockenhaus Monastery, the early-Baroque Parish Church and Lockenhaus Castle, whose frescos, underground altar niches and crypt make it one of Burgenland’s most important historical monuments, the festival can boast three very attractive performance venues.

Lockenhaus is situated in the middle of Geschriebenstein Nature Reserve. The ”Castle Road” connects Lockenhaus Castle to Schlaining Castle, the ruins of Bernstein Castle and Forchtenstein Castle. Together with the nearby thermal spas and the adjoining ”Blaufränkisch land”, with its grand wine culture, Lockenhaus can offer not only a celebrated music festival but also a host of other leisure-time activities.The year 2011 will mark the thirtieth edition of the Lockenhaus Chamber Music Festival. It will also feature the biannual Lockenhaus Academy, founded as a center for the promotion of talented young musicians right next to the former Iron Curtain. Dates: July

www.kammermusikfest.at

steirischer herbst

From whatever direction the traveler comes, he is greeted at the provincial border by a sign emblazoned with the name ”Styria” in twenty-five languages. This is a sign of a cosmopolitan spirit that is also present at the Steirischer Herbst Festival.

Graz is today a pulsating city in which one of ten inhabitants is a student, and which boasts a young cultural and festival scene. This was not always the case, and Graz was long decried as a city of pensioners, where nineteenth-century imperial civil servants from Vienna went to retire. When at the end of the 1950s a group of painters, architects, and photographers wanted to set up an exhibition hall in one of Graz’s old coffeehouses, their plan initially met with disapproval. But in 1960 they finally achieved their goal: the Forum Stadtpark was founded as a platform for art, architecture, visual arts, film, photography, and music. Its publication ”manuskripte” became a spearhead for a young, progressive body of Austrian literature. The steirischer herbst festival was initiated by the Forum Stadtpark in 1968, and long before everyone was talking about how crucial it was to cross-link the various artistic disciplines, the steirischer herbst had adopted this diversity of artistic expression as the festival’s philosophy.

The borderless and trans-genre quality of the festival is matched by its nomadic character: it sets up its headquarters at a different location each year. In 2010 the young Austrian architecture group ”feld72” constructed the festival center in the Forum Stadtpark using recyclable freight pallets, as an axis thrusting through the Forum and out into the park.

The coffee-house, club, lounge, information desk, academy, casino, and concert hall all act as the main stage of a festival whose programme brings together music, performance, dance, theater, literature, architecture, new media, and theory.

Dates: September – October

www.steirischerherbst.at

La Strada

A step toward overcoming barriers. Every summer at the beginning of August, Graz becomes one huge stage for a festival of street and puppet theater.

Passengers waiting at the rail station for the train could scarcely believe their eyes when a professional ”station farewell agency” arrived to put on a splendid platform ceremony for them tailored to their wishes: romantic or stoic, complete with tears and handkerchiefs or a manly handshake. This hilarious bit of theater dealt with traditional departure rituals, and in a learning-by-doing process, the basics of the ”art of farewells” was passed on to the audience.

This is only one of the art ”happenings” of a festival that consciously turns unusual locations in the city of Graz and other Styrian communities (Gleisdorf, Weiz, Stainz) into performance venues. Every year for one and a half weeks, street theater, acrobatics, pantomime, puppet theater, children’s theater, dance, and clown acts create space for encounters between audiences and artists from all across Europe, but also among the inhabitants of the various sections of the city.

La Strada helps visitors find out more about this city and its residents and seeks encounters across all borders. This has made the festival a long-time fixture in Graz’s cultural life — a fixture with few fixed points. What has remained since the event’s founding in 1998 is the relationship with the urban surroundings and the people who live here, the uncomplicated and barrier-free access to the performances, the eagerness to experiment, and the enthusiasm and curiosity on the part of the organizers and participating artists.

Dates: July – August

www.lastrada.at

Trigonale

In astrology, Trigon refers to a constellation. Creating connections across time and space is also the motto of the Trigonale, Carinthia’s festival of early music.

Beer-hall tables and benches filling the venerable Renaissance courtyard of the St. Veit town hall, candles burning on the tables and English and Irish beer flowing in rivers: guests at the 2010 Trigonale rubbed their eyes in disbelief when they arrived to hear pub songs of the seventeenth century as they sounded back then in London’s taverns and ale houses. And this would not be the Trigonale if this hearty musical fare were not preceded at the same location by a programme of melancholy odes by Henry Purcell, under the title ”Welcome to all the Pleasures”.

It is not only the unconventional performance venues in St. Veit and vicinity that make the Trigonale such a special event, but also the astonishing creativity of the festival’s programmers. The private library at the Baroque Ebenthal Castle, for example, which contains the world-famous ”Ebenthal Lute Tablatures”, was chosen as the venue for a recital featuring this very instrument, and audiences congregate for a midnight concert in the mystical atmosphere of the church of Tanzenberg. In view of this much open-mindedness and imagination on the part of the festival organizers it is no surprise that, because of numerous works commissioned by the festival, there is also plenty of contemporary music to be heard at the Trigonale.

Dates: September

www.trigonale.com

Attersee Klassik

Refined culture in a paradisiacal setting, as a bucolic answer to the Salzburg Festival, the Attersee Klassik festival brings outstanding cultural offerings to one of Europe’s most scenically beautiful areas.

The Attergau region with the Attersee was long cut off from the rest of the country, jealously guarded by the Habsburgs, who watched over the rich salt deposits here before the beginning of the nineteenth century, when the first travellers ”discovered” the Salzkammergut. This marked the beginning of the history of the Salzkammergut as a favoured summer resort for well-to-do Viennese as well as for many artists.

Gustav Mahler spent many summers on the Attersee, as did Johannes Brahms. Gustav Klimt immortalized the lake and the villages on its shores in many of his paintings, and Heimito von Doderer wrote parts of his famous novel ”The Strudelhof Steps” here.

The Attersee has to this day remained popular with writers, painters, and musicians. Each summer some of the loveliest locations around the lake serve as performance venues for the Attersee Klassik festival, such as Kammer Palace, which Gustav Klimt painted on several occasions, and the privately owned Berghof, whose guests included Brahms and Hugo von Hofmannsthal, who read from his ”Rosenkavalier” here for the first time to a small group of friends.

The list of artists who appear at this festival each year during the months of July and August is impressive. Conductors such as Mariss Jansons and Riccardo Muti and singers like Barbara Bonney and Thomas Hampson have performed here, as have such jazz and pop stars as Bobby McFerrin and Chick Corea. Numerous prominent Austrian authors, including Peter Turrini, Christoph Ransmayr and Barbara Frischmuth, also read from their works here.

Dates: July and August

www.atterseeklassik.at

Gmunden Festival

The finest in cultural events in one of Europe’s loveliest regions: this is what the Gmunden Festival has been offering visitors for the past twenty years.

The 2010 season was the year of the ”Philosophical Festival”, which adroitly wedded pleasure with reflection. In the Monastery Hall of Traunkirchen, a former Jesuit library, writers and scientists lectured on the Seven Deadly Sins. The author and essayist Franz Schuh chose Gluttony as the topic for his talk, the quantum physicist Anton Zeilinger spoke on Sloth, and the literary scholar Christa Gürtler explored the subject of Lust. The Sins were accompanied by jazz music infused with elements of Chinese, Mongolian and Indian traditional music, played by the duo Xu Fengxia and Paul Zauner.

This is one example of the fusions in the programming and trans-genre orientation that has characterized the festival since its founding in 1987. From June to September, classical and contemporary music, dance, lied recitals, plays, readings, films, exhibitions, and discussions are offered in the city of Gmunden, in the Salzkammergut, and in the region surrounding the Traunsee.

The famous Austrian writer Thomas Bernhard, who lived intermittently in Gmunden as well as lovingly restoring several farms in the region, and who often wrote in glowing terms of the Upper Austrian landscape in his works, has since 1999 been a focal point of the festival. In addition, in 2007 the Gmunden Festival began presenting a ”festival within the festival”, in which a great Austrian writer is honoured each year with a series of events. Featured writers thus far have included Peter Handke, Christoph Ransmayr, Friederike Mayröcker and Ernst Jandl.

Dates: June to September

www.festwochen-gmunden.at

SommerSzene

The SommerSzene Salzburg aims at moving people and opening up fields of the future by presenting the most important trends in international stage art.

”Did you have enough drinking water, food and fuel on board during the flight?” It was with questions like this one that the artistic duo of Julius Deutschbauer and Gerhard Spring confronted visitors at the 2010 Salzburg Festival as part of their ”Sound of Migration” project. And they transformed the festival’s high society into a luxurious camp for foreigners. This was one of the projects presented at the SommerSzene 2010, which has lost none of its argumentative spirit since its beginnings in the late 1960s.

Founded initially as a platform for local artists, the SommerSzene evolved into an international avant-garde festival in the 1970s and ‘80s. The SommerSzene operates its own theater in Salzburg’s historic city center, the Republic, which offers space throughout the entire year for productions by young regional, national and international artists. In addition, the apap (advancing performing arts project) was created as a network of organizations committed to nurturing emerging artists.

Contemporary dance is the centerpiece of the SommerSzene Salzburg. Theater, music, film, visual arts, and performances round out the program, which with its cross-border character and artistic risk-taking strives to help audiences break out of their conventional ways of thinking.

Dates: July

http://szene-salzburg.net/sommerszene/

Klangspuren Schwaz

Whether it is a mushrooming excursion together with contemporary composers or the traditional ”pilgrimage”, which in the course of one day leads to the various performance venues: this festival of contemporary music follows unconventional paths.

One would have scarcely recognized Friedrich Cerha among the group of mushroom hunters. Wearing a suit and moccasins, the renowned Austrian composer stomps unperturbed through the undergrowth and talks about his passion for mushrooming and music. After sufficient mushrooms have been found for the group’s lunch, the entourage heads for Hotel Grafenast, at 1,330 metres above sea level, to hear the zither virtuoso Martin Malaun. The mushroom outing is only one of the unusual events of the Klangspuren Festival of Contemporary Music, in Schwaz, Tyrol.

Another honoured tradition is the ”pilgrimage”, which leads guests to six locations in the course of one day, where contemporary sounds ring from different village and parish churches. In 2010 the journey took music lovers from Seefeld’s small lakeside chapel to Innsbruck Cathedral. Traditionally, the festival is a movable feast itself, making guest appearances at locations like the assembly hall of Innsbruck’s School of Political Science and Sociology and the atmospheric Franciscan monastery in Schwaz.

No less flexible is the festival’s programming. In 2011, the eighteenth edition of the festival, the musical spotlight will be trained on new music in Spain. The fact that the Klangspuren festival has become an indispensible fixture on the international contemporary-music scene can be attributed to the ten-day International Ensemble Modern Academy, which has taken place in conjunction with Klangspuren Schwaz since 2004. Year after year, the participation of such outstanding figures as Helmut Lachenmann, Steve Reich, György Kurtág, and Wolfgang Rihm motivates over 100 young musicians from all over the world to apply for this master class.

Dates: September

www.klangspuren.at

Bezau Beatz

Music from all genres on the village square and a picturesque village backdrop and urban, cosmopolitan music await visitors to the Bezau Beatz festival, in the Bregenzerwald town of Bezau.

Modern wood-frame construction — recently featured at New York’s Museum of Modern Art — as well as farms, an intact environment, and glorious scenery are to be found in Vorarlberg’s Bregenzerwald. It is this special mixture of traditional and modern elements that provides the ideal breeding ground for a wide array of cultural initiatives and exquisite festivals in this rural area.

One of these events is Bezau Beatz, where every Tuesday evening for a month in the summer, listeners on the village square are treated to music from all over the world, including pop, classical, jazz, rock, avant-garde and sounds from the region. Alfred Vogel, musician and energetic festival organizer, says: ”We honour the old and welcome the new; we remain true to ourselves and our homeland.” Stars of today like the Wolfgang Muthspiel Trio meet greats of tomorrow, and the village square resonates with the sound of drums from Ghana, Caribbean world music, and Alpine brass bands.

An excursion out into the magnificent Alpine surroundings of Bezau is an absolute must. Festival director Alfred Vogel recommends the Berggasthof Sonderdach, located at the halfway station of the Bezau mountain cableway, which is said to serve the world’s best ”Kässpätzle”.

Dates: July – August

www.bezau.at/bezaubeatz.html

Bregenz Spring

Dance connects — transcending physical, cultural, linguistic, and gender-related borders. And dance is hipper than ever. Evidence of this is offered at the annual Bregenz Spring Festival.

The play of light and shadows, improvised and predetermined sequences, videotaped pictures and music, and above all the chemistry of movement between the young dancer Clemmie Sveass and the 67-year-old Ralf Harster made the production by the ”alpha group”, under the direction of Darrel Toulon, one of the most touching events of Bregenz Spring in recent years. It is moments like these that draw bigger and bigger crowds every March to Bregenz, where the Bregenz Spring festival acts as the glittering kick-off to the cultural season in the Lake Constance region. World and Austrian premieres of works by internationally renowned choreographers, and ensembles from Spain, the Netherlands, France, China, numerous African countries, and Austria present contemporary dance in all its manifold expressive forms. The 2010 edition of Bregenz Spring was the most successful in the festival’s history and helped to cement its position as one of the most important dance festivals in the German-speaking world. Especially acclaimed were the performances by the Compañía María Pagés — one of the world’s leading flamenco ensembles — the Nederlands Dans Theater II, and the Flemish/Moroccan choreographer Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui. The 25th edition of Bregenz Spring will open on 18 March 2011 with the Australian Dance Theater.

Dates: March —June

www.bregenzerfruehling.at

Seriously, how many musicians entertain the upper crust of society as six-year-old kids? Or conduct their own compositions at the age of twelve, to the ovations of more than just family and friends? And who goes on from such an early career to bless posterity with melodies like the “Queen of the Night” from “The Magic Flute” (1791)? Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756-1791), as a composer and musician, was an exceptional phenomenon and Vienna is closely connected to him, particularly as he spent the last ten years – his most successful –  in the city. Around 20 Viennese locations can rightly boast that “these rooms”, “this palace”, “this church” once played host to what was probably the greatest phenomenon of musical genius to appear in the last 250 years. At the beautiful cemetery of St. Marx, it is different: there, Mozart remains to this day, as one of the deceased.

The “prodigy“ from Salzburg

Table of Contents

• The “prodigy“ from Salzburg
• The “Viennese” Mozart
• Mozarthaus Vienna
• Addresses of the Vienna Mozart locations

Let us begin, as did Mozart, with the social and political elite. Schönbrunn Palace: it is 1762 and Mozart, just six years old, is already being called the “prodigy from Salzburg”. Admittedly, his father Leopold, himself a well-known musician in the service of the Prince-Archbishop of Salzburg, has had a hand in it all. And the “Mozart family business” marks up a major success with the Habsburgs when Little Mozart plays in the Hall of Mirrors at the imperial summer residence, and the “mother of the nation”, Empress Maria Theresia and her family are duly impressed. And when, as the story goes, the six-year-old afterwards jumps up on to the Empress’ lap, their enchantment knows no bounds.

Four years later, in 1768, Empress Maria Theresia and Mozart, still very much a child, meet again on two occasions. At the Vienna Hofburg, the Empress grants Mozart, now an artist of considerable international experience, an audience of two hours. And for the consecration of the Waisenhauskirche on Rennweg, Mozart, at the tender age of twelve, writes his Waisenhausmesse, which he conducts himself in the presence of Maria Theresia. Back to the Hofburg: years later, in 1781, Mozart spends Christmas Eve here – more precisely, in the imperial apartments. The host this time is Austria’s enlightened Emperor Joseph II.

Five years have passed. It is 1786, in the Schönbrunn Orangery, and Mozart faces a more serious challenge. The 30-year-old composer, already at the zenith of his career, is before the musical “Argus eyes” of Joseph II, in direct competition with Joseph’s court Kapellmeister Salieri. Mozart’s “Impresario” is going into the ring with Salieri’s “Prima la musica e poi le parole”. Posterity shakes its head over the Habsburg ruler’s decision, but Salieri wins. Mozart, for his part, is confirmed in his distaste for the court, its ceremonial, and above all, for “playing the lackey”.

The “Viennese” Mozart

The “Viennese” Mozart, however, is not only a denizen of the court. The vivacious artist, who is forever challenging society’s conventions, also has a private life. He is even a caring father, as shown by his efforts to secure his oldest son, Carl Thomas, a place at the school of the Piaristen (Order of the Pious Schools). In a letter to his wife Constanze, on October 9, 1791, he wrote: “…at 10 o’clock I’ll be going to the offices of the Piaristen, because Leitgeb told me that I can speak to the headmaster then.” To this day, the Piaristen run not only an excellent school, but also a good restaurant – the Piaristenkeller – where guests can enjoy one of Mozart’s favorite dishes, “Kapaundl” (capon) with morels.

In 1781, in the wake of a dispute, Salzburg’s head chamberlain Count Arco, ends Mozart’s employment with the Prince-Archbishop with a kick in the rump at Vienna’s Deutschordenshaus /House of the Teutonic Order (“sent out the door with a kick in the arse”). Mozart, forced to fend for himself, turns once again to the Vienna nobility and their patronage. Even as a child, he appeared at the Auersperg, Harrach, Kinsky and Pallfy palaces with his siblings, under the watchful eye of his father. In 1786, as a 30-year-old, Mozart conducts a private performance of the opera “Idomeneo” at Palais Auersperg.

Another patron is the director of the National Library, Gottfried van Swieten – the son of Maria Theresia’s famed personal physician Gerard van Swieten, who is immortalized to this day as a pillar of the monarchy in the monument to the Empress between the Museums of Fine Arts and Natural History. In 1786, the same year as the Auersperg appearance, the younger Van Swieten invites Mozart to a “Sunday academy”, that is, a concert. Van Swieten junior has gone down in history as one of Mozart’s most important supporters and patrons.

Mozarthaus Vienna

The private but above all the happy Mozart can best be seen at Mozarthaus Vienna, which was opened in January 2006 as a Mozart center in and around one of the original Mozart locations. It was at Domgasse 5, in the heart of Vienna, that the creator of “The Magic Flute” (1791) and “The Abduction from the Seraglio” (1782) probably spent his happiest and most successful years. From 1784 and 1787 he lived on the first floor. Entering this apartment with its four large and two small rooms, and its own kitchen, one still senses the prestigious ambiance of this address. Small wonder that these lodgings saw the creation of what was perhaps Mozart’s most enjoyable opera, “The Marriage of Figaro” (1786). Covering one thousand square meters, the Mozart center is an absolute must for Mozart fans in Vienna!

Let us remain in the heart of the city. A place with equally fond memories for the Mozart family must have been St. Stephen’s Cathedral, where Wolfgang married his beloved Constanze (née Weber) in 1782. Even if Mozart scholars tell us that the newlywed husband was rather lukewarm in describing his wife’s beauty (“she is not ugly, but also far from beautiful”), there is no doubt as to her cheerfulness and loyalty even at the most difficult points in his career. This strong bond is further indicated by their six children – of whom only two, however, survived infancy. The “Steffl”, as the Viennese affectionately call their cathedral to this day, also played a role in the end of Mozart’s life. After Mozart’s death on December 5, 1791, his remains were carried here in a funeral procession, to receive their final blessing in the adjoining Kruzifixkapelle.

Mozart’s death also took place in the heart of the city, at Rauhensteingasse 8. The actual deathplace has long since vanished. Today it is the site of one of Vienna’s best-known department stores, “Steffl”. Mozart’s famous, unfinished Requiem – in a sense his musical legacy to the world – cannot be heard here.

St. Marx Cemetery is the final resting place of Europe’s greatest musician, the creator of numerous operas, masses and immortal melodies. The exact location of his grave is unknown to this day: Mozart was buried in an unmarked “shaft grave” with four or five other deceased, as it was the custom of the time.

Mozart’s resurrection began just a few days after his premature death. A requiem service was held at St. Michael’s Church at the instigation of Emanuel Schikaneder – director of the Theater an der Wien and commissioner of “The Magic Flute” (1791), during which Mozart’s last piece, the unfinished Requiem, is believed to have been heard for the first time.

As to Mozart and posterity, even if he was denied consistent acclaim during his own lifetime, the situation changed immediately upon his death. “The Magic Flute” became an unparalleled success, and his many other pieces were increasingly recognized as pinnacles of music-making.

Prominent among the many spots that recall the composer is the Mozart memorial in the Burggarten, created in 1896. At Vienna’s large Central Cemetery, a further monument to Mozart has stood among the Graves of Honor since 1891 – in direct proximity to those of other composers such as Beethoven and Strauss. Also worth a look is the Mozart Fountain at Mozartplatz in the fourth district, also known as the Magic Flute Fountain, since this group of bronze figures (unveiled in 1905) portray the main characters of the opera, the flute-playing Tamino in the embrace of Pamina. For those in need of consolation and sustenance, the great musician can also be remembered at Café Mozart, just behind the State Opera.

The Haus der Musik (House of Music) takes a different approach. It devotes a room to Mozart where original objects from his life are on display, and modern infotainment media allow visitors to “conduct” an unforgiving Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra in “Eine Kleine Nachtmusik” (1787). „Namadeus”, the interactive computer programme based on Mozart’s musical game KV 516f, offers visitors the opportunity to playfully turn their names into original Mozart interpretations.

Addresses of the Vienna Mozart locations

• Mozarthaus Vienna, Domgasse 5, 1st district, www.mozarthausvienna.at
• Schönbrunn Palace, Schönbrunner Schlossstrasse, 13th district, www.schoenbrunn.at
• Orangery (Concerts), Schönbrunn Palace, 13th district, www.imagevienna.com
• Hofburg, Kaisertor, Innerer Burghof, 1st district, www.hofburg-wien.at
• Waisenhauskirche, Rennweg 91, 3rd district, www.pfarrerennweg.at
• Mozart’s Deathplace, Rauhensteingasse 8, 1st district, (building no longer in existence)
• National Library, Josefsplatz, 1st district, www.onb.ac.at
• Mozart memorial, Burggarten, 1st district
• St. Marx Cemetery, Leberstrasse 6-8, 3rd district
• St. Stephen’s Cathedral, Stephansplatz, 1st district, www.stephanskirche.at
• Central Cemetery, Simmeringer Hauptstrasse 234, 11th district, Mozart Monument: Grave 32A, No.55, www.friedhoefewien.at
• House of the Teutonic Order (Deutschordenshaus), Singerstrasse 7, 1st district, www.deutscher-orden.at
• Palais Auersperg, Auerspergstrasse 1, 8th district, www.auersperg.com
• Palais Harrach, Freyung 3, 1st district
• Palais Daun-Kinsky, Freyung 4, 1st district, www.palaisevents.at
• Palais Palffy, Josefsplatz 6, 1st district, www.palais-palffy.at
• Mozart Fountain, Mozartplatz, 4th district
• Piaristenkeller, Piaristengasse 45, 8th district, www.piaristenkeller.at
• Café Mozart, Albertinaplatz 2, 1st district, www.cafe-mozart.at
• Michaelerkirche, Michaelerplatz, 1st district, www.michaelerkirche.at
• Haus der Musik, Seilerstätte 30, 1st district, www.hdm.at

Author: Hans-Christian Heintschel

Surrounding the magnificent Baroque convent at Schlierbach, towering above the Upper Austrian Krems Valley, an integrated network of the most diverse organic activists has emerged. Upon approaching the town of Schlierbach it feels as if a kind of Garden of Eden has been reached: cows graze peacefully on luscious green pastures, happy chickens peck the ground between blossoming fruit trees and if you wander up the hill you will see free roaming turkeys. And, of course, there are plump wool sheep and highland cattle that seem to stem from a much earlier time.

What may seem as if it had always existed is the product of a long process of a change in thinking. Organic food has been the purview of a few fundamentalists for a very long time, but it is now embraced by the “bobos” and the “lohas” of the information age in the upscale urban neighborhoods of cities from New York to Vienna. “Bio” (the German word for organic) is now much more than a new fad: it is a permanent fixture of the future. It is not surprising that the large supermarket chains are turning an ever growing profit with their “bio” selections. Austria ranks at the top in Europe with “bio” products.

Back to dreamlike Schlierbach: “quality is supreme” is the guiding principle of the convent cheese production. The cheese dairy, operated by the monks, has been producing quality organic specialties since 1999. The organic convent cheese, a semi-hard cheese with naturally occurring fat content, the Bio-Paulus, a mild but savory soft cheese, as well as the creamy Bio-Baccus with red rind (a crosta rossa) have long since become favorites among cheese gourmets. While persuading yourself of the quality of the exquisite “stinking” cheeses it is possible to visit the Baroque convent and the modern cheese diary at the same time, concluding with a tasting at the “epicurean center” in a modern glass structure that seems to float over the valley.

Traveling west from Schlierbach, sign after sign invites you to take a break or even sojourn for awhile with “holiday at the bio-farm.” In Vöcklamarkt there is a “Bio Noah Farm” that has been established to protect unusual races of domestic animals and plant cultures. The “Bio Noah” swine live in large free compounds and cattle breeds such as the rare Pustertal Sprinzes are among the kinds of animals that are bred and sustained at Noah’s bio-arch.

Returning east another pioneer enterprise awaits at the edge of the fertile Eferding basin: the bio-farm of Ilse and Günter Achleitner. The alphabet of gourmet delights reaches from A as in Apple to Z as in Ziegen (goat) cheese and the bio restaurant serves delicious meals daily.

A few dozen kilometers farther north there is probably the best organic bread baked in Austria: the “Maurach Strutzen” of rye and natural sour dough. This quality is certainly related to the clear water filtered through primary rock soil but also to the altitude of the Mühlviertel area. Grains thrive here with large and strong roots that impart vitality and the characteristic aroma. There is a smaller yield but it is compensated by higher quality. Recipes handed down for generations guarantee a proper disaggregating of the flour: here the dough is given time to develop.

Those who want to savor their meals with good wines have found the right place by coming to Austria. At the world fair for organic produce in 2007, the BioFach in Nürnberg, 16 Austrian organic wines received the “gold” award and 2 even received the highest award of all, the “grand gold.” Most important aspects of organic wine growing are doing without fertilizer and pesticides, insecticides and herbicides. The allowed upper levels of sulphur content are one-third below the legally determined limits.

Perhaps the most famous and expensive wine in the world from the Romanée Conti estate in Burgundy is grown and pressed according to biodynamic principles. Completely affordable wines, however, are available at the bio-dynamic producer Meinklang: they not only make a statement about the soil and fauna of the Neusiedl Lake National Park they are the manifestation of a philosophy – every sip is a reminder that “bios” in ancient Greek means life.

LINKS:

www.bio-austria.at

www.biohof.at

www.biohotels.info

www.bioinfo.at

www.bio-noah.at

www.bio-oesterreich.at

www.bio-steirer-wein.at

www.hofmarke.at

www.leeb-biomilch.at

www.mauracherhof.com

www.meinklang.at

www.oekoland.at

www.sonnentor.com

www.stift-schlierbach.at

Organic and Ecological Seals in Austria

Many tourist enterprises in Austria have dedicated themselves to sustainable economics. Many of them now take advantage of the possibility to certify this responsible approach to business. Here comes a review of the most important organic and ecological seals of approval.

The Austria environmental seal of approval earth, water, nature and air. These four elements of the ecology are represented in the logo of the Austrian environmental seal of approval. Those who have been granted this seal of approval have committed themselves to a responsible approach to dealing with these essential resources. The environmental seal of approval is granted and monitored by the Federal Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry, Environment and Water Management. The criteria for approval encompass all relevant ecological aspects of a tourist enterprise such as waste management, energy efficiency and conservation, healthy cuisine with regional and seasonal products as well as ecologically friendly travel to Austrian destinations.

Among the 200 approved enterprises there is a wide variety of offerings. The first eco-hotel to be granted the seal was the Carinthia Biolandhaus Arche: Beginning with its adobe construction style and extending to the use of organic cotton in bedding this enterprise met the highest standards of environmental friendliness. Many camping sites have committed themselves to environmental friendliness as well, such as the Berau Camping on Lake Wolfgang. They require waste separation, use environmentally friendly paper, ecological cleaning agents, and organic products in the kitchen. The ecologically minded tourist does not have to search out these certified businesses on their own: They can simply book with the travel agencies Railtours Austria, Radreisen Austria or Mondial, all of which have ecologically certified travel offers.

The European environmental seal of approval is recognized internationally The entire EU is rethinking its approach to ecological sustainability, which is reflected in the tourism industry by Eco-Flower, the designation of the European environmental seal of approval. The essential elements of the seal regard limiting energy and water consumption, reducing waste, efforts to use renewable resources, and encouraging awareness of environmental issues. In Austria there are around 20 hospitality enterprises that have earned the “European flower” including several camping sites.

Biohotels: The way to environmental protection is through the stomach Hospitality enterprises that carry the designation “Bio” promise sustainable products. Whether luxury hotel, farm or wellness institution, they all guarantee that 100 percent of the food that lands on the table is organic. In general the cuisine includes ingredients that mature in the region and are harvested there. Gene manipulated or chemically treated food is simply not allowed. A primary requirement for the designation “Bio Hotel” is a certification according to the EU ecological declaration and regular inspections. Many Bio Hotels do not stop at sustainable economics in their food offerings, even though the Bio Hotel seal of approval does not require it. At the Naturhotel Grafenast for instance, the renewable resource wood is an important aspect of their general concept. The entire hotel has been built of wood from the region and room heat comes from a biomass furnace which also provides heat to the region. The pool is heated by solar collectors. In the Carinthian Gralhof, where many organic food products are produced in the adjoining farm, climate protection is an important consideration and produced in the adjoining farm, climate protection is an important consideration and produced in the adjoining farm, climate protection is an important consideration and produced in the adjoining farm, climate protection is an important consideration and produced in the adjoining farm, climate protection is an important consideration and the necessary energy comes from their own sustainable sources. Visitors to Austrian organic farms will find special attention to production in harmony with nature. Fruits, vegetables and herbs are produced without chemical additives. The animals are kept according to principles appropriate to the species and can graze naturally on pastures while their cohorts have to spend the largest part of their lives in stables.

If it says bio, it means bio Whether as souvenir or for their own use – more and more tourists want sustainable quality. With 15 percent of agricultural land used for organic production, Austria is Europe’s largest organic food producer relative to population. Not all of the 70 seals of approval for food are related to organic production, however. Still, it is easy to recognize organic production by the label “bio” or “eco,” since these labels are proprietary: If it says bio, it really means bio.

It is also possible to recognize organic food by the control number that must be on every type of packaging. The first two letter AT stand for Austria. If the designation ends with the letters “BIO” this certifies organic quality. As of 2010 all food products must be identified by an EU Bio logo, a blue-green rosette with a kernel of grain.

Specifying eco textiles is somewhat more difficult because the designation of textiles still has not been uniformly defined within the EU. In general one should look for the proprietary designation “from regulated organic production” as well the European ecological seal of approval. The most common and rigorously controlled label at present is the “Öko-Tex-100” emblem. For additional security it is also possible to check the Austrian environmental consulting service or the market check of Green Peace.

Sustainable CO2 compensation projects Part of sustainable travel is an environmentally friendly mode of transportation. Many vacationers who cover long distances by airplane are aware of the high CO2 emissions caused by airplanes and are willing to compensate for them. Although flying will always be an ecologically unfriendly form of travel and compensation for emission is not a charter to fly at will, there are environmental and climate protection agencies that provide reasonable recommendations for rational compensation.

Truly sustainable projects are principally recognizable by the “Gold Standard” or “CDM” (Clean Development Mechanism). The projects in question demonstrably reduce emissions and only renewable energy sources are employed.

Furthermore, many of these projects can be found in those developing countries and emerging markets that are most directly affected by climate change. In Austria institutions such as Atmosfair, Myclimate, Climatepartner and Climate Austria offer organizations such as CDM or projects such as Gold Standard their support.

LINKS:

www.umweltzeichen.at

www.umweltzeichen-reisen.at

www.lebensministerium.at

www.bio.arche.hotel.at

www.berau.at

www.railtours.at

www.austria-radreisen.at

www.mondial-reisen.com

www.demeter-reisen.de

www.eco-label.com/german

www.grafenast.at

www.farmholidays.com

www.biolebensmittel.at

www.umweltberatung.at

www.klimabuendnis.at

www.atmosfair.or.at

www.myclimate.at

www.climatepartner.at

www.climateaustria.at

With the power of nature – products from the land

The time has come for natural products that take us back to the basics and fill old wisdom with new life. Especially in a country such as Austria, which is rich in resources and new ideas, there is no lack of possibilities to discover the best of what nature has to offer with all of your senses.

Goat butter ointment

Table of Contents

• Goat butter ointment
• Edelweiß in cosmetics
• Cheesy?
• Cleopatra’s secret
• Honey bee
• Oil mining
• Arnica
• A hayloft for the home

The ultimate fragrance experience: When in 1915 Florian Stix was still experimenting with his formula for goat butter ointment he could hardly have imagined that he was laying the cornerstone for a universally operating enterprise. Today, his uncle, Wolfgang Stix, using the ecologically correct trademark “Styx Nature-cosmetics,” is producing highest quality cosmetics for all needs while avoiding all animal testing. By employing the huge resources of traditional herb expertise, products such as “Rosengarten” (“rose garden”) for the bathroom, special moor products, and a comprehensive aroma therapy have emerged. In addition there are fresh herb extracts as well as cold pressed plant oils from organic farm sources. It is worth looking into!

Edelweiß in cosmetics

Edelweiß, otherwise known as the star shining brightly on Alpine pastures. At altitudes between 1,800 and 3,000 metres (6,000 to 10,000 ft.) in the limestone Alps there grows a legendary plant whose retrieval once could become a life- endangering challenge and therefore caused many a worshiper to rethink his efforts. We are talking about the Edelweiß, often referred to by the locals as the Alpine Star, which in addition to its use as “herb of love” also possesses unusual cosmetic properties. It is these properties that are exploited by the cosmetics line Almstern (“alpine star”) developed specially for the Arlberg hospice in St. Christoph and the Goldener Berg hotel in Oberlech. It combines finest Edelweiß extract with pulverized precious granite stone. Ice-cold naturally pure well water, cosmetic mountain honey, finest oils from the Bergdotter flower and peeling kernels from the heart of walnuts complete this special and very relaxing type of treatment. Finally we have a way to express affection for the Edelweiß that can be purchased conveniently on-line and requires no mountain climbing skill of any kind.

Cheesy?

The idea of finding a practical use for whey came to Ingo Metzler in the Bregenz Woods in the year 1991. The dairy began looking for expansion potential in their own production and found it in, of all places, the product consisting of almost 90 % water that was left over after the production of their “Wälderkäsle” (“cheese of the woods”). It was an immediate success: The number of people reacting with allergies to synthetic cosmetics is constantly rising. Whey, on the contrary is a tried and true cosmetic with an excellent influence on the skin. The selections of the Metzlers range from whey bath products to shower oils to facial care. Through the addition of healing plant essences from their own gardens these products are not only extremely effective, they have a wonderful aroma. These products are at least as endorsable as the Metzler cheese creations!

Cleopatra’s secret

It is said that Egyptian Queen Cleopatra bathed in donkey’s milk for the sake of her beauty. This also seems to work with mare’s milk that is processed into fine cosmetic products by the Steuer family in Hittisau in Vorarlberg. Without animal testing and with exclusively organic ingredients the product line “Equinea” improves the functioning of the skin, protects it from harmful environmental influences, supports the regeneration process of skin cells and protects the immune system of the skin. All of these characteristics make mare’s milk an insider tip for people with allergies and especially those with neurodermititis. As supportive treatment the Steuers recommend drinking cures. All-in-all mare’s milk is a life’s elixir, rich in vitamins, trace elements, minerals, polyunsaturated fatty acids, proteins and enzymes – and easily digestible even for those suffering from stomach disorders. Prospective clients need not learn how to milk a horse: Steuer’s mare’s milk is available in frozen form, and, especially convenient, as freeze-dried powder.

Honey bee

Busy messengers of beauty. To each province its own honey bee? At least Carinthia has one, the so-called Apis mellifera carnica, that mutated from the western honey bee and has felt quite comfortable in southern Austria for centuries. The mild mannered and busy Carnica draws on the abundance of the provincial landscape to create not only wonderfully aromatic honey, but valuable complementary products such as Gelée Royale, propolis, bee’s wax and Rosenthal mountain and flower pollen, sold by the beekeepers in the Rosenthal valley of delights. Propolis, the wax that is used to insulate the beehives, and Gelée Royale, the feeding liquid used by the honey bees to nurture the queens are popular and supportive agents employed not only in alternative medicine and natural healing but in cosmetic care, as well. We thank our bees!

Oil mining

Since when has oil been mined and not produced from ripe fruits or seeds? At the latest since a certain Martin Albrecht discovered a very special oil shale in the Bäche Valley in the Karwandel area that is still today mined at 1,500 metres (5000 ft.) altitude above sea level and processed by Albert’s successors into Tirolean stone oil. This oil profits in the truest sense of the word from the original potency of the sea: It contains traces of all organic substances that for millions of years were deposited in the pre-historic Mediterranean sea and which through the sinking of the water and the emergence of the Alps became accessible. Through the ingredients from pre-historic sea animals and plants and its high quantity of naturally bound sulphur, this oil, which is applied externally, has a gentle and effective influence on the skin, the hair and physical mobility. It is original energy that is just as effective today as it ever has been.

Arnica

Murmuring wonder of nature In the nature park Kaunergrat the local families have regularly collected the richest treasures of nature. This is where arnica, St. John’s wort, camomile, marigolds and mountain pines grow, which are collected by hand and carefully made into care and health products. A specialty in the large selection that is available under the name “good things come from Tirol” is the marmot oil, also known in mountain regions as “the oil of life.” The name may sound hackneyed but the name of this product truly has an authentic source. The oil which comes from the fat of the marmot is rich in glycerides, linoleic acid, and other styroids: It has been used for centuries for complaints of the muscles and joints because of its blood circulation stimulating and infection resisting properties. For what is good for the lumberjack will be good for the pencil pusher… .

A hayloft for the home

Those city folks who would like to wake in the morning feeling as if they have just spent the night in a mountain lodge they will want to buy a Rax Alpine bed of Alpine herbs and turn their bedroom into a romantic hayloft. The hand manufactured mattress set is stuffed with the aroma of spicy mountain herbs, has a hemp-sheep’s wool fleece and a core of top quality hay. For one to two years the mattress makes for sound sleep and needs only occasionally to be rejuvenated in the sun. The mattress cover is made of controlled organic cotton. And just a word about dust mites: In contrast to humans they are adverse to the smell of hay!

LINKS:

Styx Naturcosmetic GmbH Am Kräutergarten 6 3200 Obergrafendorf Tel.: +43 2747 3250 www.styx.at

almstern 6580 St. Christoph Tel.: +43 5446 26110 www.almstern.at

Metzler Käse-Molke (dairy) GmbH Bruggan 1025 6863 Egg Tel.: +43 5512 3044 www.molkeprodukte.com

Steurer Stutenmilch und Stutenmilchkosmetik (mare’s milk and mare’s milk products) Bolgenach 2 6952 Hittisau Österreich Tel.: +43 5513 8149 www.stutenmilchkosmetik.at

RosentalerCarnica Honig (honey) Ressnig 49 9170 Ferlach Tel.: +43 4227 5119 www.carnica-rosental.at

Tiroler Steinöl Vitalberg-Betriebs GmbH Pertisau 56 6213 Pertisau am Achensee Tel.: +43 5243 5877 www.vitalberg.at

Gutes aus Tirol (good things come from the Tyrol) Naturpark Kaunergrat Wald 100 6471 Arzl im Pitztal Tel.: +43 5412 64128 www.gutesaustirol.at

RAX Alpenkräuterbett (Alpine herb bed) DI Andreas Gmeiner Kleinau 28/Scholz Hütte 2651 Reichenau an der Rax Tel.: 0699 11954704 www.lebensartnatur.at

Vienna Naschmarkt – the best traditional market in town

It is said that the realm of the Balkan states begins in Vienna. If you walk through the Vienna Naschmarkt and, on a Saturday, through the adjoining flea market you will clearly understand why.

There were two major trade routes that met in Vienna: the Amber Road connecting north and south, and the Danube route going east and west. Hundreds of years ago goods were brought by land and by water to Vienna from the Occident and Orient including foodstuffs that have always been of exotic popularity. In addition local farmers pleased the palates of the former royal capital population with home-grown products. All of these traders gathered at a central market that was dubbed the “munch” market (“Naschmarkt” in German) – an appropriate moniker considering the appealing selection of fruits, vegetables, and sweets.

Wiener Naschmarkt. Abendstimmung in den Restaurant-Gassen des Wiener Naschmarktes. © Österreich Werbung, Fotograf: Volker Preusser

In the 1920’s merchants were granted small trading houses for their products so that they did not have to daily mount and dismount their stands. This also meant that vendors and their products were protected from the elements – an important advancement for a market that was open year around. From then on products were aligned in three long tiers in front of the small shops and hawked by loud-voiced peddlers.

Ever since the Viennese have bartered for the fresh and rare victuals available at the Naschmarkt. In making your way from the Sezession building on Karlsplatz to the Kettenbrückengasse through the market with the boisterous offers of the vendors you can sense the flair of the Balkan states. With outstretched hands you are invited to great bargains on sheep cheese, olives, Wasabi nuts or freshly picked dates. The refrains can be heard from all corners: “my fair lady!” “young man!” “Try some!” and “please, what is your pleasure?”

There are Nordic fish stands, local fruit and vegetable dealers who also sell now rare varieties such as leather apples and wild parsnips and there is “vegetable Edith” with new mushrooms from the Burgenland region. Beguiling odours spread forth from the tiny Oriental and Asian shops. The “cheese hut” beckons with exquisite varieties of cheese – from Norwegian caramel cheese to Corsican Brin d’amour. Baked goods, stands with meat and seafood, vinegar specialties, and “Cucumber Leo:” altogether they create a bazaar atmosphere that could hardly be more lively.

If you’re not careful your shopping bag will be filled with more than you anticipated: “Casanova’s Antipasti” has what seems an inexhaustible supply of varieties of appetisers. Health food fans will be entranced by the plentiful selection of health foods at “Bio-Welt” and the “Ayurveda Coast.” Persia welcomes with delicacies to delight all of the senses: dried starfruit, miniature kiwis, barberries, nuts, figs, Arabian chocolate. Many vendors gladly offer tastings.

As does Ahmad Maan, for instance, son of a herbal healer from Baghdad who continues his family tradition at the Naschmarkt with spices, teas, and oils in his “house of herbs.” Whether cardamom, blue fenugreek, blue ginger, common mistletoe, or “Moroccan gold,” known as Argan oil, they all have an healing effect on the body. Whatever your ailment the always jovial Iraqi will mix an assortment especially for you.

The famous Viennese enterprise Gegenbauer, founded in 1929, graces the Naschmarkt with not one but two appealing stands on the Naschmarkt lane. On the one side it exudes an odour of fine vinegar: as result of intensive research the grandson of the founder developed innovative sorts of vinegar that can be sampled before purchase. These are varieties such as rowan berry vinegar, quince vinegar, and apricot vinegar, aged in glass globes.

Gegenbauer’s roasting house is located opposite. One type of coffee is roasted using three different methods producing the “Morning,” “Naschmarkt,” and “Evening” coffees. But not only coffee is roasted: many varieties of grain can be roasted at moderate temperatures and develop an excellent flavour. Gegenbauer has contracted with local organic farmers to grow old varieties of grains such as Emmer, einkorn containing lutein, mountain wheat, hulless oats and barley. These innovative and healthy products have found their way into many a kitchen.

A walk through the Naschmarkt makes it clear: the market of long held traditions not only has newest trends to offer it provides a place for typical Viennese word wrestling to meet Oriental flair. A shopping spree at the Naschmarkt becomes an international culinary and cultural adventure. And now the legendary market is celebrating its 80th birthday

Every second row at the Naschmarkt offers gastronomy for all tastes: the range extends from the gourmet fish restaurant to sushi and Asiatic cuisine, classical Viennese fare, Italian grilled specialties, pasta, crêpes, or Greek specialties, to truly international cuisine that is inspired by all of the delicacies available at the Naschmarkt. Since the quality is first class everywhere the small establishments are almost always overcrowded. In the summer the mini-restaurants spread out wherever they can until very late in the evening, since restaurants, in contrast to the stands, are open for business until almost midnight.

LINKS:

Guided tours of the Naschmarkt
www.viennawalks.com

The Vienna Naschmarkt
6th district, Wienzeile between Sezession and Kettenbrückengasse
Mo – Fr 6:00am – 7:30pm,
Sa 6:00am – 5:00pm

Eating places:
Mo – Sa 6:00am – 11:00pm c.

When lazy little holidaymakers suddenly turn into enthusiastic hikers, there are generally good reasons for this. And things are no different at Tscheppa gorge in Carinthia’s Karawanken mountains. Daring visitors cannot resist trying out its high rope course and rushing waterfalls.

The ravine extends for almost two kilometers, from the entrance at „Goldenes Brünnl“ to the junction between the Bodenbach and the Loiblbach rivers. The gorge was worn away by the force of water over millions of years, and the path through it is lined by attractions such as the Tschauko waterfall, the rock gateway and the Devil’s Bridge, all set off by unique vegetation.

If you plan to take this route, you should be steady on your feet – after all, you’ll be dealing with ladders, uphill paths and swaying walkways! But do not fear: The route is perfectly suited to families, and even children will have no problem coping with it. You can choose between three different paths, each with a bus stop at the end of them so you can take the bus back to your starting point. Anyone with reduced mobility can also board the Tscheppa gorge bus for the central observation point, which gives a view of several waterfalls at once.

Despite all these exciting experiences, the ravine still has plenty more to offer. Right at the beginning of the Tscheppa gorge you can also find Carinthia’s first high rope course. With its seven different routes and 77 elements, it invites visitors to climb, clamber, hover in the air and stare in amazement. One truly spectacular attraction: Austria’s largest ‚flying-fox‘ zip line: a cable slide 300 meters in length and up to 42 meters in height. Tightly secured, you can speed down into the valley while enjoying a bird’s eye view of the landscape.

www.tscheppaschlucht.at

www.ferlach.at

www.waldseilpark-tscheppaschlucht.at

Krippenstein, Obertraun

Breathtaking perspectives, interesting facts and a natural experience that is out of this world – all this can be found on the Krippenstein at the World Heritage site of Dachstein-Hallstatt. The Krippenstein cable car will whisk you to an altitude of 2100 meters above sea level in matter of minutes.

The first thing you’ll see when getting out at the top is ice that never melts! Gleaming brilliant white, the Hallstatt glacier, the largest glacier in the Northern Limestone Alps, stretches away to Dachstein. The Welterbe-Spirale viewing platform is just a few minutes‘ walk away from the upper station of the mountain. Steps wend their way up to a ’ship‘ made of aluminium, where visitors will find information panels about Unesco World Heritage sites all over the world. But the most thrilling view is of Lake Hallstatt, which spreads out like a fjord, shimmering dark blue far below.

7000 years of cultural history come together here. Before pressing on with your journey, you can take a break on the recliners below the mountain peak. A bit of rest will do you good as the next destination – the 5fingers – is not for the faint-hearted. Here five individual observation ‚jetties‘ extend like fingers over a 400-metre drop, offering a dizzying view of this World Heritage site. New perspectives also open up with the WeltNATURerbe view above the Krippenstein Lodge.

Here visitors not only have a perfect view of the nearby Dachstein, but also learn interesting facts about the world of the glaciers. And if you have time to spare, you can stroll along the family-friendly Heilbronner Rundwanderweg, a circular nature trail, taking in the bizarre karst formations and alpine meadows full of herbal plants and admiring how the chamois nimbly scale the heights. One activity that is very popular – particularly among photographers and early birds – is to take a trip on the Krippenstein cable car at dawn. Getting up first thing is really worth it, as the morning light in the high mountains is unforgettable.

www.dachstein-salzkammergut.com

Nationalpark-Zentrum Schloss Orth

A slow but intensive means to discover Austria is on foot. Placing your feet one in front of the other in regular cadence allows ordering thoughts and rhythmically filling your lungs with fresh air. Whether gentle strolls or ambitious mountain tours – the journey is the reward.

In the rolling forest zone of Austria, for instance, there are quiet out-of-the-way trails to listen to the sounds of nature and as evening falls to watch the fog slowly settle over the mysterious rock formations. Walking along the flat shores of the Neusiedler lake, on the other hand, you can experience a marvelous water world and haven for fowl. The Alps make it possible to escape the civilized world: far away from motorways and supermarkets the walkers rely on their own endurance and the power of their own muscles. Standing at the summit – no matter how high or how low – that the walker has just scaled, and peering down at the world from which they have ascended provides an indescribable feeling of freedom and inner peace. Unforgettable, an overnight stay in a mountain cabin in which the simple food tastes twice as good due to the vigorous exercise and where the stars in the night sky shine brighter than anywhere else. Hikers are left, too, with the gratifying feeling of leaving nature behind exactly as they have found it.

Those in the know who want to be at one with nature will chose the Villgraten Valley in the Tyrol: far away from the bustle of all everyday tourist attractions a world awaits travelers where they can hike or ski without the technology of cable cars or T-bar tows. Houses from ages ago and huts on high mountain pastures that are manned in the summer summon the traveler to a very special experience: a contemplative journey into the past.

“Slow Travelers” yearning for pleasures to remember will find the many and varied Austrian organic enterprises to their liking. Whether organic farm, organically oriented bio-guesthouses or even the elegant bio-hotel: they all focus on offers of a setting at one with the seasons, nature and the specific region. Guests are invited to have a personal holiday experimenting, tasting and appreciating. Once again these are places where the tourist learns that traveling means stopping to contemplate.

Advanced “slow travelers” thrive on serenity and the joy of doing nothing. Whether in the orchard of a Styrian organic farmer, on the shore of a Carinthian lake or in the shadow of the mountains of Tyrol the goal is to take time for new encounters. Most of Austrian tourist enterprises are run by families which makes it easy for the guest to make first acquaintances leading to conversations, stories and memories that enable a different understanding of the holiday destination, that make it more meaningful and intensive.

Incidentally: those who can forfeit speed and instead chose to arrive by bus, train or boat are not only doing the environment a service but will find the transition from daily routine to vacation and back again easier to manage. The slowly changing landscape, the chat with the new acquaintance in the seat across from you, or the first encounter with a foreign language are welcome occasions to close the door to daily routine and begin to happily anticipate the holiday about to begin. On the return journey you can once again watch the now familiar landscape or the passing of the mountains while rejoicing in that feeling of unfettered freedom you had at the summit of the mountain while preserving the memory.

Links:

www.bauernhof.at

www.waldviertel.at

www.neusiedlersee.com

www.biohotels.info

www.dasvillgratental.at

www.innervillgraten.at

www.forumandersreisen.de

www.respect.at

huetten.wandern-in-oesterreich.at

Galtür Alpinarium

The combination of protective walls and exhibition rooms makes the Galtüralpinarium and its architecture unique in Europe today.

A stone circle lit from inside in the entrance hall and a glass facade with alabaster stones symbolise the simultaneously fascinating and threatening forces of nature. The mountain village and ski region of Galtür experienced this close up in 1999. The community lost people, homes and hopes due to an avalanche. All the more remarkable is its regeneration. The 345m long and up to 19m high avalanche wall not only integrates art and culture, but impresses with modern interior design and the exterior architecture adapted to the townscape and nature. The use of the alpine signal colors of yellow and black, blue glass cullet as symbols of glaciers in the bar of the „Frozen Water“ cafe and a bouldering wall form additional mountain reference points. The „LIFE ON THE MOUNTAIN – Snow Fascination – Avalanche Myth“ exhibition shows the mountains as a challenge to the people, but also as a rootstock for myths and fairy tales, as a point of restoring peace and strength.

www.alpinarium.at

Winter vacation in Austria with Kids

Planning a ski holiday with your sister and her son sounds easier than it is. Since there are so many children-friendly options for holiday making in Austria it is very difficult to decide. The order of the day is sorting, sorting, sorting. And immersing yourself in a bright and happy universe…

“You do it!“ says my sister and she really means it. As a single parent she has her hands full with every imaginable task. So there is no choice but to relegate oneself to one’s fate and to start studying the options. A task that is not undertaken without a hidden agenda. After all, if little Bastian is happy and, moreover kept busy, the adults will have adequate time and peace of mind to make it a holiday suited to them as well.

The task is anything but easy, especially if one doesn’t have one’s mind made up for a particular winter sports region. Children friendly facilities such as pistes and lifts designed for children, and children’s courses or special meals for the juniors can be found almost everywhere. After a while, though, one offer seems especially interesting: in the ‚Children’s Ski World‘ at Weissensee in Carinthia there is a so- called measuring bear named Meterix who manages a unique discount program. The smaller the guest, the lower the cost. Sounds good you think, and you read on. There’s a character named Bobo who accompanies the little ones on their first skiing attempts and makes learning fun. There is also a mini club, known as kiddie club, where Bastian can play to his heart’s content while mommy and auntie enjoy an espresso in the winter sun or race down the slopes on their own skis.

So far so good – but that doesn’t last very long until the next attractive offer changes your thinking: On the Riesneralm there is the “First Austrian Children’s Ski Teeter-totter” plus the longest lift conveyer belt on which the young skiers easily, safely and comfortably can make it to the top. Then there’s a magic carpet, a bumpy train, adventure parcours… I can just hear my nephew screaming with delight.

Austria has even developed its own seal of approval to designate optimal children’s supervision during the winter holidays: “Welcome Beginners” guarantees among others “a freely accessible children’s playground, full-time day care with or without skiing and a theme dominated children’s nursery with mascot.” So far 15 ski regions have been granted this seal of approval, among them the Winter Sports Region Kasberg and the Hochficht in Upper Austria, the Winterreich at Hochkönig and the Rauris Hochalmbahnen in the province of Salzburg or the Kreischberg and the Stuhleck in Styria. “Fifteen?” I ask myself. That makes exactly fourteen too many for me to make a decision. And then in an instant the next highly promising alternative pops up: in the Tannheim Valley there is a Sioux village, two magic warming igloos, a giant tube slide, and a snow park encompassing an area of ten thousand square metres with animals all stemming from the stone age. And on the Kreischberg there is the chance to plunge into the “Dinoworld” or into “Yabaa Dabba Doo-Land.”

Before completely retreating into my own childhood, it’s time to go and get a fresh cup of coffee and attempt to achieve a somewhat better perspective. Then, full of renewed vigour, the holiday destination emerges that will delight young and old alike: “McDumboland” in Fieberbrunn/Pillerseetal. This is a place where little Bastian will not only benefit from the “newest pedagogical and technical advances in skiing instruction that make learning to ski truly children’s play” – he will also be occupied with so many activities that he will fall into bed happy and exhausted while occupied with so many activities that he will fall into bed happy and exhausted while occupied with so many activities that he will fall into bed happy and exhausted while occupied with so many activities that he will fall into bed happy and exhausted while occupied with so many activities that he will fall into bed happy and exhausted while occupied with so many activities that he will fall into bed happy and exhausted while occupied with so many activities that he will fall into bed happy and exhausted while occupied with so many activities that he will fall into bed happy and exhausted while occupied with so many activities that he will fall into bed happy and exhausted while occupied with so many activities that he will fall into bed happy and exhausted while the grown-ups are able to spend time in the sauna or at the bar. Children aerobics, sailing down the slopes dressed as an Indian, a big children’s olympics with all sorts of agility contests and a final picnic on the McDumbo mountain with the mascot of the same name… What more could the little rascal ask for?

I’ve almost made a decision when my sister rings me. I mustn’t forget that she wants to keep a close eye on Basti at all times during his adventures on the slopes – he can be at times very unpredictable. After mulling over the principle of “allowing children to discover their own world” my eyes suddenly discover “Berta’s Children’s land” in Fiss-Ladis in Tyrol. Do I see right? They have their own special children’s television! In other words, while the adults are enjoying their second dessert, the playful antics of Basti and his cohorts are transmitted directly to two large television screens in the family restaurant. And while mothers keep a close watch on their children the rest of the guests can revel in the panoramic sweep of the mountains through the surrounding huge windowpanes.

The decision is made. At least for the moment. It will probably change soon. There is no telling if Bastian might not fall in love with “Lars the Polar Bear” in the Au-Schoppenberg in Vorarlberg. Or my sister opts for an especially appealing wellness facility. All of which demonstrates that, in fact, it is impossible to make a bad choice – no matter what the outcome. All of Austria’s children friendly winter destinations are best prepared for spending a successful holiday with you and your children.

LINKS:

www.weissensee.com
www.riesneralm.at
www.hochkoenig.at
www.donnersbachwald.at
www.kreischberg.at
www.tannheimertal.at
www.pillerseetal.at
www.serfaus-fiss-ladis.at
www.au-schoppernau.at/skischule

Welcome Beginners (among others.)

www.dachstein-west.at
www.kasberg.at
www.hochficht.at
www.forstau.at
www.raurisertal.at
www.hochalmbahnen.at
www.gerlitzen.com
www.kreischberg.at
www.hochkoenig.at
www.hochkar.com
www.boehmerwald.at
www.stuhleck.com
www.dietauplitz.com
www.fageralm.at

www.hochjochbahnen.at

Harvest time in the biosphere park in the Großes Walsertal valley

The Großes Walsertal in Vorarlberg carries the impressive sounding name “UNESCO Biosphere Park.” “Utilizing nature without damaging it” is the credo of the region.

The inhabitants of the valley are especially proud of their provost convent St. Gerold. The convent has a guesthouse offering accommodations for 60 vacationers. The convent also caters to the needy with the “Oasis 2000” project that finances their holidays. The provost convent aspires to be a place to meet and communicate and therefore has no television. Horses are important the convent: there is hippo therapy, healing equestrian instruction as well as conventional horseback riding. Workshops and seminars are organized around several themes such as dance, Zen Buddhism, the Feldenkrais method, and fasting. The neighboring Marul, the village in which all farmers have converted to organic farming, is worth a visit.

www.grosseswalsertal.at

www.walsertal.at

Niederweiden and Eckartsau Palace

The graceful and uncomplicated architecture of the Niederweiden Palace provides a charming contrast to the overpowering estate of the Hof Palace.

For a proper gastronomy for the eminent guests the architect Fischer von Erlach designed an annexe with a kitchen specializing in game. Two open ovens are large enough to prepare a whole deer on a spit. Sideboards of brick served as plate and platter warmers and the food itself was kept hot with the help of a segmented warm water bath. There are also exhaust chimneys functioning just as modern exhaust hoods do. 15 to 35 persons can dine as true royalty accompanied by flickering candles.

The Eckartsau Palace and the Emperor’s Trail for a guided hike through the Danube Marshlands National Park.

First marvel at the grand chambers of the Baroque Eckartsau Palace, the residence of Austria’s last emperor before he departed into exile. The exhibition “From Royal Hunting Grounds to National Park” at the information stand of the palace traces the historical development of the area. Then you can take the guided tour along the Emperor’s Trail. The activity lasts approximately four hours and requires at least ten participants.

Information and reservations:
Schloss Orth Nationalpark-Zentrum
Tel.: +43 2212 3555
E-mail: schlossorth@donauauen.at
www.donauauen.at

Bergisel ski jump

Known to many above all from the Four-Hills Tournament, the futuristic ski jump on the Bergisel has become a new landmark of Innsbruck.

Designed by star architect Zaha Hadid in 2001, the revamped Bergisel-Schanze is an architectural sensation. The structure sweeps round to end with a section housing the café, viewing terrace and starting ramp. If you are feeling energetic, you can climb the 455 steps up the main tower. However, a much easier option is to take the cable car and visitor lift to the top. Here you will find the café and restaurant as well as a panoramic viewing platform with a 360° view of Tyrol’s mountain scenery. Since its opening, the ski jump has proved to be one of the most popular visitor attractions in Tyrol. Open daily from 9.00 am to 5.00 pm.

www.bergisel.info

Wiener Festwochen

A festival begins every year with a giant party in the town hall square that combines cultural events of the highest quality with socially relevant content and objectives.

Vienna is one of the world’s leading cultural metropolises. In the 60 years of its existence, the Wiener Festwochen (Viennese Festival Week) has secured an important place as innovative festivals with international cooperation.

Events are performed in various places throughout the city cross all sectors – opera, theater, concerts, performances and installations – whether in the Museumsquartier, one of the ten largest cultural complexes in the world, at the ‚Theater an der Wien‘, the Musikverein, the Playhouse or in the markets and squares of the city. Classic, contemporary or classic modern music in operas and concerts, legendary theater marathons and the Vienna Boys Choir in the Church building are part of the programme, just like the annual „Into the City” series, whose aim is to address different communities in Vienna and integrate them into the cultural activities of the city.

www.festwochen.at

Augustiner Bräustübl

The German writer Carl Zuckmayer mentioned it in his memoires, and he is only one of the countless celebrities to have downed a round (or more) at the Augustiner Braustübl.

This brewery dating back to the 17th century is not only the largest beer drinking establishment in Austria – the various snugs and vaulted halls are spread out over 5,000 square meters and the giant garden can seat 1,500 thirsty souls –, it is also one of the most special. The beer is made “by hand” in accordance with age-old brewing principles and then filled into wooden kegs especially for the Bräustübl, from which it is then drawn on tap. Typical regional snacks are available in the ‘Schmankerlgang’, an old vaulted arcade.

There is one quite interesting fact about the Bräustübl: it is allowed to bring your own food! But of course you have to buy the beer there!

Contact:

Augustiner Braustübl

Lindhofstraße 7

5020 Salzburg

www.augustinerbier.at

Das Lough Rea Hotel bietet romantisches Ambiente und einen gut ausgestatteten Spa-Bereich. Nur 20 Autominuten von der lebhaften Stadt Galway entfernt erwarten den Gast 91 stilvolle und modern eingerichtete Zimmer und Suiten mit Blick auf den majestätischen Lake Loughrea.

Die Einrichtung des Lough Rea Hotels ist zeitgemäß, minimalistisch und doch gleichzeitig luxuriös, warm und freundlich. Das Haus bemüht sich besonders darum, eine Wohlfühlatmosphäre zu schaffen. So wird hier etwa auf die Bequemlichkeit der Betten überdurchschnittlich großen Wert gelegt. Auch beim Service – und insbesondere bei der professionellen Ausrichtung von Hochzeiten – hebt sich das Hotel von anderen Vier-Sterne-Häusern ab.

 
4 Sterne Hotel: edles Design plus Seeblick

Das Haus setzt auf edles, klares Design und hochwertige Materialien. Dunkles Wenge Holz vermittelt einen gediegenen, luxuriösen Eindruck. Die harmonisch damit kombinierten Pastellfarben verleihen den Zimmern Leichtigkeit und Gemütlichkeit. Auch der Ausblick vom Hotelzimmer ist etwas Besonderes: Alle 91 Räume haben Blick auf den Lough Rea See oder die ursprüngliche Landschaft von Connemara. In sämtlichen Hotelbereichen und in allen Zimmern steht kostenloses WLAN zur Verfügung. Alle individuell gestalteten Zimmer des Boutique-Hotels bieten Flachbildfernseher, Minibar, Safe, Telefon, Bügeleisen und Fön. Die Räume verfügen entweder über ein Kingsize-Bett oder zwei Einzelbetten. Auch geräumige Familienzimmer und Dreibett-Zimmer für Freunde, die ein gemütliches Golf- oder Wellnesswochenende planen, werden angeboten. Die behindertenfreundlichen Räumlichkeiten verfügen über Betten mit geringer Einstiegshöhe, Notfalltasten sowie Badezimmer, die auf die Bedürfnisse von Rollstuhlfahrern zugeschnitten sind. Den guten Schlaf fördern Komfortmatratzen und eine durchdachte Schallisolierung. Für gute Luft sorgen Aircondition in allen Zimmern und Rauchverzicht im gesamten Hotel (mit Ausnahme eines Raucherbereichs).

Hochzeitssuite mit luxuriösen Extras

Die romantische Lage unweit des und die beeindruckende Natur in Connemara machen das Lough Rea Hotel and Spa zu einem beliebten Ziel für Hochzeitsreisende. Auch für Hochzeitsfeste im kleinen und großen Rahmen ist das Haus gerüstet. Der Veranstaltungsservice des Hotels kümmert sich um die Dekoration des Festraums, gibt Hilfe bei der Zusammenstellung des Menüs und sorgt auf Wunsch auch um ein Musikprogramm. Für Hochzeitsbankette oder Feiern im kleinen Rahmen stehen mehrere hochwertig ausgestattete Räumlichkeiten zur Verfügung. Auch eine Hochzeitssuite kann gebucht werden: Die geräumige Suite mit Kingsize-Bett verfügt über einen offenen Wohn-und Essbereich mit individuell gestalteten Möbeln und einer frei stehende Badewanne sowie einem besonders luxuriös gestalteten Badezimmer mit Regendusche. Auf Wunsch werden Champagner und Rosenblüten bis hin zu Schokolade und Kerzen auf das Zimmer geliefert. Für Flitterwöchler oder verliebte Paare hält das Hotel eine Reihe romantischer Arrangements bereit: etwa ein romantisches Frühstück im Bett, ein Candlelight Dinner auf dem Zimmer oder speziell für Liebende zusammengestellte Citytouren.

Thermalbecken, Hydro-Therapie und Massage

Der Spa-Bereich des Lough Rea Hotels bietet verschiedene Anwendungen wie etwa Rasul, Massagen, Bäder, Hydro- und Aromatherapie. Hier kann man außerdem im Dampfbad, um Thermalbecken, in der Biosauna, am Eisbrunnen oder im Jacuzzi relaxen. Der Beauty-Bereich umfasst einen Haarsalon. Bei den Beauty-Anwendungen stehen die phytoaromatischen Pflegeprodukte der Edelmarke Yon-Ka zur Auswahl. Das Spa-Cafe steht ebenfalls im Zeichen der Entspannung: Hier kann man im Bademantel und in lockerer Atmosphäre einen kleinen Imbiss einnehmen oder gemeinsam mit Freunden ein Glas Wein genießen.

Leichte Bistro-Gerichte und à  la carte im Restaurant

Wer nach dem großen Frühstücksbuffet – auf Wunsch als Full Irish Breakfast – noch Lust auf einen kleinen Imbiss hat, findet in der Lir Bar & Brasserie des „Lough Rea“ eine Auswahl an Sandwiches, Paninis und anderen Kleinigkeiten. Hier werden außerdem Cocktails und das Abendessen serviert. Die Bar mit ihren einladenden Sitznischen wird auch von Businessreisenden gerne frequentiert. Das Hotelrestaurant Abbey bietet nicht nur gehobene internationale Küche. Hier wird in einer zeitgemäßen Weiterentwicklung auch typisch irisch gekocht. Die Atmosphäre des Abbey ist entsprechend der Hotel-Linie stylish und doch warm und gemütlich.

Wellness, Golf, Action und Wandern

Zur Freizeitgestaltung bietet sich im Lough Rea angesichts des breiten Angebots an Anwendungen, Massagen und Beauty-Dienstleistungen vor allem Wellness an. Rund um das kleine Städtchen Loughrea gibt es außerdem ein vielfältiges und umfangreiches Freizeitangebot. Wer Action mag, findet hier etwa Gelegenheit zum Go-Kart-Fahren, Paintballing oder Zorbing. Außerdem kann man hier Golf spielen. Der 18 Loch Gort Golf Club ist nur ein paar Minuten vom Hotel entfernt. Auch Wanderfreunde kommen auf ihre Kosten. Direkt ab dem Hotel bieten sich mehrere, nicht besonders anspruchsvolle Touren an, die auch weniger Trainierte gut bewältigen können.

Ein ruhiger Platz mit Blick auf den Lake Loughrea

Das Lough Rea ist etwa zwei Autostunden von Dublin und nur etwa 20 Fahrminuten von Galway entfernt, wo es auch einen Flughafen gibt. Es ist damit ideal gelegen, um die Midlands und den Westen Irlands zu erkunden. Das Zentrum des kleinen Städtchens Loughrea ist zu Fuß in wenigen Minuten erreichbar. 

Professionelle Tagungs-Services für bis zu 600 Teilnehmer 

Für Tagungen und Meetings stehen im Lough Rea und Spa mehrere Konferenz- und Veranstaltungssäle zur Verfügung (ab zwölf bis 600 Personen). Auch die entsprechende Konferenztechnik wie Beamer, große LCD TV-Schirme, Whiteboards; Flipcharts, Lautsprecher und Mikrofone ist vorhanden.

 Pluspunkte

 ·       besonders bequeme Betten mit Komfortmatratzen

·        sehr gutes Preis-Leistungs-Verhältnis beim Essen

·        moderne, geräumige Zimmer

·        sehr freundlicher Service

·        kostenfrei in allen Hotelbereichen nutzbares WLAN.

Gut zu wissen

·        Das Spa beinhaltet keinen Pool und kein Gym

·        Haustiere sind nicht gestattet

·        Die Nutzung des hundert Quadratmeter großen Wellnessbereichs ist gebührenpflichtig

Info: https://www.loughreahotelandspa.com