The Styriarte 2024 is once again breaking new ground with a completely new music-theater format. A three-day, participatory music festival - the first part of a multi-year "Attems saga" - will be the centerpiece of the festival, which runs from 21 June to 21 July 2024 under the motto "The power of music" will run.
"Thank you for the music, the songs I'm singing, thanks for all the joy they're bringing!" This is how ABBA sang to an audience of millions in 1977. In the symphonic ABBA concert at Styriarte 2024, this song should not be missing, just like the joy it has been spreading for half a century. Regardless of whether it is Handel or Robert Stolz, Mozart or Bertl Mütter: music goes straight to the heart and makes any resistance futile. Alexander the Great also has to experience this in Handel's "Alexander's Feast": The singing effortlessly steers him from one state of mind to the next - a perfect template for Alfredo Bernardini in the opening evening of the festival. "The Power of Music", the subtitle of Handel's famous piece, will serve as the motto of the Styrian Festival in summer 2024.
Styriarte at Palais Attems © Nikola Milatovic
The great classical pillars of the program will be rammed in by luminaries: Jordi Savall conducts Monteverdi's "Marienvesper" in Pöllau, Alfredo Bernardini plays Mozart's "Gran Partita" in the Helmut List Halle, Pierre-Laurent Aimard celebrates the second part of the "Well-Tempered Clavier", Mei-Ann Chen leads the Styriarte Youth Orchestra in the "Symphony from the New World", Michael Hell presents his version of Monteverdi's "Orfeo". A colorful garden of simple and magnificent, remote and familiar, indigenous and foreign musical styles blooms between these pillars, all proving in their own way how powerful the art of sound is. Whether a percussion ensemble in the Minorite cloister or Schubert songs in Stainz, whether Reinhard Mey alla Eddie Luis or "Summ mit" with Lorenz Maierhofer - the music is always close to the people and speaks directly to the heart.
The central event of the festival is also about music "in the midst of life". In the first part of the "Attems Saga", Thomas Höft, Adrian Schvarzstein and Michael Hofstetter tell the story of what happens when an empress comes and then doesn't stay - as happened in 1750, when Maria Theresa only honored the people of Graz for a few hours. The festival tells the story of what might have happened back then between Palais Attems, the Alte Aula and the Schauspielhaus with great music and full comedy, with turbulent scenes and an "opera of the seasons" freely adapted from Vivaldi.
June 21 to July 21, 2024
styriarte.com
Zefiro Baroque Orchestra, Alfredo Bernardini © Nikola Milatovic
