The Moritzburg Festival remains a hotspot for musicians from all over the world. For the finale this weekend, the renowned festival pulled out all the stops once again. The Moritzburg Academy, featuring more than 40 young artists from 19 countries, performed at Dresden’s Kulturpalast, with its orchestra concert themed “Everything Flows.” The performance sparked a wave of enthusiasm among the audience.
A musical journey through river landscapes
In fact, just as with the festival as a whole, the finale was a musical journey through river landscapes. The program opened with Bedřich Smetana’s “The Moldau,” conducted by the academy’s chief conductor, Josep Caballé Domenech. An arrangement of Richard Wagner’s “Song of the Rhine Maidens” from the opera “Götterdämmerung” and Robert Schumann’s “Rhenish Symphony” also tied in with the program’s title. “The Blue Danube” by Johann Strauss followed as an encore.
The Dresden premiere of a work by Mozart was awaited with particular anticipation. Of his Concerto for Oboe and Orchestra in F major, only the first movement had survived as a fragment. Oboist and composer Gotthard Odermatt had completed it. Albrecht Mayer performed the virtuosic work and received enthusiastic applause. Incidentally, the principal oboist of the Berlin Philharmonic also declared his love for Dresden. He said he really enjoys coming to the city on the Elbe—and not just because of the Frauenkirche. It starts with the friendly doorman at the Kulturpalast: “I don’t know anything like that in Berlin.”
