NEW YEAR’S EVE CELEBRATIONS IN SALZBURG

THURSDAY 29 DECEMBER 2016 TO MONDAY 2 JANUARY 2017

On 27 January 1756, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart was born in Salzburg to one of Europe’s leading music teachers, the composer Leopold Mozart, and his wife Anna Maria Pertl Mozart. Under his father’s zealous instruction, by his sixth birthday, Wolfgang had become competent on clavier, organ keyboard and violin, composed his first work, and performed for European royalty. His birthplace, a prosperous independent city on the Northern boundary of the Alps, was the capital of the sovereign Archbishopric of Salzburg, then part of the Holy Roman Empire.

 

In 696 AD St Rupert established what eventually became the largest monastery in the German-speaking world, St Peter’s Abbey. In 1077, Archbishop Gebhard built his principal residence in a mighty fortress. Fine Romanesque abbeys and churches followed, with Salzburg’s Cathedral of St Vergilius and St Rupert becoming the largest and most magnificent basilica north of the Alps. By the 17c the city was equipped with resplendent ecclesiastical and municipal baroque buildings. Also sustained by the beauty and energy of the city, the composer Josef Haydn, the writer Stefan Zweig, the poet Georg Trakl and the conductor, Herbert von Karajan lived here. It is a very inspiring place indeed.

With its snow-capped mountain setting, intimate medieval streets, dramatic Baroque facades, and, above all, its superlative musical tradition, there could be few more fitting places to spend New Year’s Eve than in Salzburg. We have arranged to attend a Mozart concert in the Archbishops’ Alte Residenz; a New Year’s Eve concert in the magnificent Marble Hall of the Schloss Mirabell; a pre-concert reception and splendid New Year’s Eve dinner in the candlelit dining room of the grand, historic Hotel Sacher with a phenomenal ringside view of fireworks; a New Year’s Day concert of Dvorak and Tchaikovsky in the Festspielhaus, and private visits to view hidden treasures of the town as well as specialist visits to the Mozart Wohnhaus where Mozart lived for a time, and the Mozart Geburtshaus, where Mozart was born. Each day we will hear sublime music, including compositions by masters: Vivaldi, Mozart, Haydn, Beethoven, Dvorak, Tchaikovsky and Strauss. Our meals and coffee breaks will be taken in Salzburg’s most treasured restaurants and coffee houses.

COST £2125 Members, £2175 non-Members, £195 SRS. Deposit £500, includes flights London-Munich-London, private coach transfers to Salzburg, four nights’ accommodation at the Hotel Elefant, all breakfasts, all coffees and teas, all lunches, all dinners with wine in Salzburg’s best restaurants including New Year’s Eve reception and dinner in the Sacher Hotel, three concerts, all entries, guided tours and private visits, tuition, the services of Edda Irvine, a most excellent Inscape tour manager, gratuities and VAT.

FULL ITINERARY

BOOK HERE