Idea
Conjecture – study – reflect
Ragna Schirmer explores the fascination of Mozart in a new way
The pianist Ragna Schirmer has been constantly immersed in music since her early childhood. There is no clear boundary between her work as a pianist and as a teacher. She promotes young talent with the same passion with which she also forges and fosters her artistic partnerships. Over recent years, Ragna Schirmer could be seen and heard at the Mozartfest as an inquisitive, socially committed and approachable person, as “politically one of the most intelligent, prudent and energetic artists of our country” (quote from the FAZ newspaper). This amazingly versatile artiste étoile will appear in a wide range of settings in the 2023 season: in the MozartLabor, with Oskar Schlemmer’s “Triadic Ballet” in the Museum im Kulturspeicher (museum in the culture warehouse) for school classes and adults, and on the road with the “Blauer Eumel”. She will tell us all about her closeness to Mozart on six evenings in the Residenz: in concerts with orchestras from Finland and the UK, as a chamber musician together with the Schumann Quartet, with scholarship winners from the MozartLabor and at a piano recital with commentary.
The Mozartfest 2023 presents itself with a top-class program
The concerts in the rooms of the Würzburg Residenz form the heart of our programme, presenting first-class artists who are keen to explore Mozart and his links to the present in their own particular way. One example is the pianist William Youn who, together with the Munich Chamber Orchestra, will perform not only Mozart’s piano concerto No. 9 in E-flat major KV 271 but also a new concerto inspired by Mozart written by the South-Korean composer Younghi Pagh-Paan – Mozart juxtaposed. Another exclusive project at this year’s Mozartfest is a concertante performance of an operatic rarity, which was created jointly by several composers around Mozart in Vienna one year before he wrote the “Magic Flute”. “The Magic Island or The Philosopher’s Stone”, featuring a team of top-flight soloists including Daniel Behle and Michael Schade.
The motto of “Conjecture – study – reflect” also plays an influential role in our established platforms like the MozartLabor or “M PopUp”. The latter is curated by Hanni Liang and her students at the University of Music and Theatre Munich and will run under the banner of “StadtBegegnungen” (city encounters) during the four weeks of June. With the “M PopUp”, just as with all the other evenings in the programme, the Mozartfest aims to offer meeting points where different generations can discuss and enjoy music. That is its contribution towards Würzburg’s “Year of the Senior Citizens”. Such initiatives, which intend to celebrate the contemporary and allow more people to get involved in classical music, are among the Mozartfest’s characteristic traits and point the way to the future. The German Federal Cultural Foundation will generously subsidise the Mozartfest in the upcoming four years, giving it the requisite latitude for further “contemplation” of new concert formats with inquisitive boldness together with artists and audiences. That is a token of recognition and appreciation we are proud of and yet another incentive for us to continue along our chosen path.
We invite you to delve into the multi-facetted programme of the Mozartfest 2023 and be captivated by Mozart’s music!
Evelyn Meining
Artistic Director of the Mozartfest Würzburg
As of 27.1.2023
Program Facets
The Würzburg Residenz, a UNESCO World Cultural Heritage site, churches, monasteries, wineries, palace gardens or industrial monuments are the stages for a multi-faceted cornucopia of events in which the focus is on shared appreciation and exploring aural sublimities.