Dribble. Drizzle. Rain. Downpour. Right at the beginning of the opening piece, Beethoven’s “Prometheus” overture, the moist crescendo had begun – and reached an unreasonable strength by the final chord. The feared thunderstorm, the opening of the Grafenegg Festival on Friday evening had still overtaken – and did not affect the Tonkünstler-Orchester Niederösterreich, which worked on the covered podium of the “Wolkenturm”, but it did affect the open-air guests in the precautionary measure laid-out rain pouches. Instead of the expected termination, however, a surprise for the time being. “We have to interrupt the concert due to the weather,” it said through the loudspeakers to the drenched guests, “please stay in your seats.” Loud laughter from the stands.
An anxious minute later, the cancellation followed – but it was probably not quite as coordinated as the Corona concept would have intended. Celebrities, politicians and music lovers, all equally soaked and disheveled, fled in bright flocks through the rain lashing down towards the parking lot. Probably the shortest and most curious Grafenegg opening of all time.
Washed away “solid as a rock”
Fortuna is really not grafenegg this year. In spring, the corona pandemic threatened to force the classical music festival to be canceled. Similar to the Salzburg Festival, the organizers then obtained approval with a strict hygiene concept. The catch with this year’s rules of the game, however, is that no alternative accommodation is available in the event of rain. Because the otherwise used “auditorium” apparently does not have enough space to accommodate all the outside guests with the necessary baby elephant distance.
That is precisely why the opening came to an abrupt end – although a commissioned work by Konstantia Gourzi and Beethoven’s Triple Concerto would have waited for the performance. All the more bitter in view of the words that the artistic director and pianist Rudolf Buchbinder had chosen for his speech at the beginning: He, who is active worldwide, would have had to erase all the performance dates from his calendar in mid-March – only 14 August in Grafenegg would not have been deleted, because that was “solid as a rock” for him.
Now this “rock” has been washed away, but by no means the entire festival massif, which is to extend into September: On Saturday, Alice Sara Ott is to appear with the Tonkünstler Orchestra, on Sunday the star Tenor Jonas Kaufmann with the pianist Helmut Deutsch – if the weather gods don’t repeat his treacherous timing.
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