Wistfulness lies over this Whitsun Festival in Salzburg.

Sadness for the people we lost to the pandemic.

Maxim Vengerov starts his violin and, as an encore after Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy's violin concerto, plays the saraband from the D minor Partita by Johann Sebastian Bach, "for all musicians who have died of Covid-19".

Jan Brachmann

Editor in the features section.

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    Melancholy, too, because it may never be the same as it used to be: The wind instruments of the Orchestra del Maggio Musicale Fiorentino play in a hideous enclosure made of Plexiglas walls at this concert in order to catch the flight of infectious droplets and aerosols.

    Melancholy, too, because you suspect that you won't be able to hold onto something you've loved for much longer.

    Zubin Mehta, who conducts the concert, turned 85 at the end of April.

    He had survived a life-threatening illness three years ago.

    In Salzburg he conducts sitting down, surrounded by an aura of friendly wisdom.

    In the trio of scherzo from Mendelssohn's “Italian Symphony”, the horns and bassoons can be heard very softly and gracefully: a sound as if, in a haunt of extreme amiability, an old hero stepped out of his picture in the ancestral gallery with the gentlest nobility.

    Kettle drift against "high culture"

    What will the future look like after classical music has become less important than hairdressers in the pandemic? At a time when radio editorships and state chancelleries are being blown against the exclusive, barrier-free “high culture” and the canon is suspected of being discriminated against? There is sadness in the air that the Salzburg Festival is now going through the process that ends with marginalization. Being in the moment, not constantly wanting to leave, this is what Vengerov's tone tells us when he plays Mendelssohn. The clay takes time to bloom, and he gets it. And so his playing opens up the tragic dimension of musical beauty: it has to pass in order to unfold. The will to savor conflicts with the need to continue.

    At this Whitsun Festival you could experience what a determined, energetic conductor the countertenor Philippe Jaroussky has become. When he led the performance of Alessandro Scarlatti's oratorio “Cain overo il primo omicidio”, he had prudence and a rich gestural vocabulary. His ensemble Artaserse bounces in play and refrains from noisy vulgarization of sound. The singers are all to be praised: powerful, but vulnerable, the tenor Krešimir Špicer as Adam, of dramatic force and intimate warmth Inga Kalna as Eva, with the fiery male Filippo Mineccia as Cain and really sensational with light, bright, full-bodied, deceptively feminine Male soprano Bruno de Sá as Abel.With a radiant, majestic alto, Paul-Antoine Bénos-Dijan as the voice of God faces the duel with the steel-clean, powerful bass-baritone of Yannis François as the voice of Lucifer.

    Just an hour and a half after the oratorio, Giacomo Puccini's “Tosca” begins in a concert performance under Mehta's direction. Luca Salsi as Scarpia understands the malevolence of the fine. His villain is a vocal gentleman, his perfidy is called Contenance. Jonas Kaufmann seems to be insufficiently sung in the first act as Cavaradossi. His half-voice singing is fragile, the height does not yet speak clearly when singing softly; but he is committed to the role. And the world farewell in the third act he succeeds, with a copper-dark timbre, moving, and without any sentimentality.

    Anna Netrebko sings a Tosca of enviable proportions in all registers. This voice sounds beautiful, no matter where it is, where it comes from or wants to go. It can jump in the air and land safely, even if it has to be very quiet. It can drown out trumpets with tips in fortissimo without it becoming shrill. And it has enough elasticity to then become quiet on the tip. You can hear the biography of her voice, her origins from the bel canto roles of Donizetti and Bellini. But you can always feel the technical control in all the sensual fullness of her soprano. The mixture of coquetry and narcissism in the first act suits her more than the release of despair. Not even in the failure of her figure, the distance to the singer is broken. Netrebko maintains her vocal self-protection down to the last note.

    It is touching that Cecilia Bartoli, who sang great roles by Handel and Mozart and gave her own concert, also takes on the role of the shepherd boy in “Tosca”, in which she made her operatic debut in Rome as a ten-year-old. The strength and charisma, the intelligence and the warmth of this singer are unique. Zubin Mehta is also ravished by her. At the end of his concert he interrupts the final applause from the stage, holds out his hands towards the audience and shouts: “Cecilia, è per te” - Cecilia, is for you! In a plea for art as metamorphosis, she herself closed her solo concert with a tenor hit by Ernesto De Curtis: “Non ti scordar di me” - don't forget me. Even if in future one should no longer be allowed to remember "high culture" with impunity,your directorship at the Whitsun Festival will be remembered as a golden time.