After thirteen years as director of the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin, you are now in charge of your first festival as artistic director of the Kissinger Sommer.

Where do you start with the content work?

Jan Brachmann

Editor in the Feuilleton.

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As a health resort with a large number of illustrious guests, we have an exciting urban and cultural history.

This is the starting point for the program of my first year of festivals: "Vienna - Budapest - Prague - Bad Kissingen".

A festival like ours needs guidelines: a clear signature and an unmistakable profile to give the audience even more reasons to come to Bad Kissingen.

Great artists can be heard everywhere these days.

The cultural area of ​​the old Imperial and Royal Habsburg monarchy resonates in your theme.

Robert Musil's "Kakanien" in the UNESCO World Heritage baths - that looks very much like a nostalgia program.

That depends on the perspective.

Our story deserves more publicity.

Of course, every Kissinger knows that Sisi was here five times.

If you dig deeper, you will learn that Balthasar Neumann - who had the Franconian Saale relocated here in 1737 and in doing so uncovered the healing spring, which was named after the Hungarian freedom hero Ferenc Rákóczy because of its wildness - had Bohemian roots.

The first musicians for the Kissingen spa bands came from Bohemia in the nineteenth century.

We give space to this story in the program.

Of course, I also deal with questions about the future.

In addition to the repertoire, these are primarily questions of concert formats and presentations.

Today's experiments with concert forms are geared towards the audience's perceptions and less towards the demands of the work;

Programs become fragmented;

Socializing plays a bigger role.

In this context, do you still see a future for festival operations?

In any case, as long as the work is in the foreground.

Of course it must be possible to have the violinist Patricia Kopatchinskaja recite Arnold Schönberg's "Pierrot lunaire" - as we did on June 22nd - but also to intersperse the work with two waltzes by Johann Strauss, one of which is the "Emperor's Waltz", arranged by Schönberg, once the "Treasure Waltz", arranged by Anton Webern.

This break, this alienation is our conscious decision to make Schönberg perceptible in a different way.

Nevertheless, we are not positing any new truth for the performances of this work.

More generally, if we're going to be sustainable, we need to break down the barriers between what traditionally happens on stage and the audience much further.

This can include interdisciplinary projects,

What role does it play for you that Bad Kissingen has World Heritage status?

A big.

This is a privilege, an opportunity and a responsibility at the same time.

Of course, since the cure no longer exists as a form of treatment financed by the health insurance companies, a spa must also think about what relevance it can have tomorrow.

The UNESCO seal can help with this.

Bad Kissingen received the award in 2021 as part of the "Great Spa Towns of Europe" association with ten other spa towns in seven countries.

I see potential for us to network more closely in the future.

Are you feeling the consequences of the pandemic?

We came out with our program in January and the first two months of pre-sales went very well.

We must have struck a chord with the regular audience.

After a slump in April, sales have been picking up again since mid-May.

But you can tell that people are planning more cautiously and on a shorter-term basis.

Why should you come to Bad Kissingen from June 17th to July 17th?

Anyone who takes a look at our program will notice that many things can only be experienced here.

Even the big orchestral concerts are rarely ready-made tour programmes.

"Festival" means celebrating.

We try to celebrate our place and its great history and carry it into the future.

There will be readings here late in the evening from the letters of Franz Liszt and Richard Wagner as well as from those of Sisi and Emperor Franz Joseph with the two main actors of the RTL remake of "Sisi";

There are also free artist talks - all in our beautiful premises.

Is the music itself so weak that you now need stories to help it up?

No, the music speaks for itself.

Nevertheless, it must always be about creating access and building bridges.

If someone buys tickets for the "Sisi" reading with Dominique Devenport and Jannik Schümann on July 9 and then goes to a concert with the Wiener Symphoniker beforehand, when Lise Davidsen sings Richard Strauss' "Four Last Songs", and at the same time the taste comes, then we have achieved something.