About
From June 2 to July 2, 2023, leading musicians as well as up-and-coming artists with Mozart expertise will come to Würzburg and transform the »beautiful, magnificent city« into a sounding stage. The detailed program as well as the motto of the coming season will be published at the press conference on January 27, 2023.
Mozartfest is the main event of the year with the participation of world classical music stars.
If you are interested in this schedule leave a request. As soon as the playbill is announced, we will let you know immediately, and you will be the first to get the tickets.
In each section, you will get the best seats for the same price - centrally located and in front rows.
We provide seats with the best acoustics only.
Even in the world's best concert halls and opera houses, the listening conditions can vary greatly, and some seats are better than others. Sometimes nearby seats have very different viewing and listening conditions.
Usually, these seats are sold out soon and available for early bookers only. We guarantee that you will receive full-view seats only.
Detailed information about the 2023 Festival will be added later. Please read about the previous "Mozartfest 2022":
Mozartfest 2022, held in the year after the festival’s 100th anniversary, marked the start to a new century in the event’s history: a season that was again reflected the profile of a classical music festival which has always been both tradition-conscious and future-driven alike. The primary aims pursued in that season’s 84 events was to explore the phenomenon of Mozart in all his ambivalence and discuss his many facets in a host of different ways. Constituting the programmatic starting point of each event, Mozart’s works, which were composed in the second half of the 18th century and have been enthralling audiences in concert halls and opera houses all over the world ever since, attest to both his superior musicianship and the timeless appeal of his scores.
"All in one: The freethinker Mozart" was the motto of that season. It embodies the fascination and provocation, the consummate perfection and ambivalence of Mozart’s works. It also highlights the iconoclastic attitude of the artist, whose thirst for knowledge transcended boundaries, and references his works to our musical present. To quote composer Isabel Mundry, the artiste étoile of the Mozartfest 2022: »We need musical stories to understand our present time, in all its complexity and diversity.« She is thus creating an intriguing arc to the past and future from the central starting point of the present day. »It’s all about incorporating the one into the other«, says Isabel Mundry. The composer has curated eight concert programmes for the Mozartfest along those lines. These quite deliberately avoid simply juxtaposing the traditional and the contemporary, allowing instead the works and eras to inform each other. The pieces chosen from Isabel Mundry’s richly nuanced œuvre which was presented to the Würzburg audiences in 2022 reflect precisely this striving for pure, aurally vibrant musical moments. The world premiere of her latest work on 11 June was one of the highlights in that year’s season. The work is called Signaturen. It was commissioned by the Mozartfest Würzburg, created in cooperation with the Elbphilharmonie Hamburg and financed by the Ernst von Siemens Music Foundation.
Many musicians and ensembles whom Isabel Mundry has worked with was making their debut at the Mozartfest 2022. These included the Resonanz ensemble, the Recherche ensemble and the Musikfabrik ensemble. Top-ranking ensembles and orchestras were joined by soloists of international standing who are at home on the world’s concert stages. Vilde Frang, Carolin Widmann, Robert Levin, Seong-Jin Cho, Jörg Widmann, Nils Mönkemeyer and William Youn was among the artists performed here in Würzburg in early summer.
About the Mozartfest Würzburg
Every year in early summer, the prince-bishop baroque city of Würzburg forms the framework for the renowned Mozart Festival - and has been since 1921. Having emerged from the Mozart Week of the Twenties, the Mozart Festival today represents the aspiration to cultivate, convey and podium the work of Wolfgang Amadé Mozart to create a contemporary engagement with his music.
The festival program invites with more than 60 concerts and events to experience classical music in high-caliber ensembles of chamber music, symphonic, vocal and world music. Every year, around 25,000 visitors appreciate the diversity of the offer: first-class orchestra and chamber concerts in the magnificent Kaisersaal of the Würzburg Residence (UNESCO World Heritage Site) and atmospheric open-air concerts in the illuminated Hofgarten - the popular "Nachtmusiken" - have been part of the festival since the founding year , Outside the Baroque splendor, the Mozart Festival attracts with exclusive events that combine Mozart's music and the merits of Mainz Franconia: world music and cabaret in wine cellars and wineries of the region, symphony concerts in the impressive Würzburg Cathedral, entertaining classical music in postindustrial ambience or musical-culinary gala evenings - framed of picturesque vineyards and Franconian (life) art.
Mozart Festival in the 21st century
The Mozart Festival stands for preservation and continuity as well as for artistic and intellectual departure. To confront the music of the past with today, to question it anew, to make it comprehensible and palpable in its actuality - that is the Mozart Festival in the 21st century. Not classic as a museum review, but animation through the here and now. Mozart is always the starting point and brightly lit fixed star. The annual festival theme focuses on central aspects of classical music. An outstanding artist personality, the "Artiste étoile", shapes the respective annual program with his concerts. Exclusive and innovative programs, commissioned compositions, renowned composers and world-class interpreters: the result is an exciting Mozart Festival that invites you to new listening and experience perspectives.
After Würzburg Residenz had been approved to be used for charitable purposes in 1919 and the first concert held in its Kaisersaal in the following year, the director of the Bavarian State Conservatory of Music, Hermann Zilcher, initiated a music and theatre week in 1921, the precursor of today’s Mozartfest. Zilcher organised the first »Mozartwoche« from 17 to 26 June 1922, during which only works by Mozart were performed. The programme comprised concerts in the Kaisersaal, night music events in the Hofgarten, a teatime concert in the Gartensaal, sacred music in the Neubaukirche and a garden party in Veitshöchheim, laying the foundations for the Mozartfest’s distinctive concert formats right from the outset. The architectural features of both the Residenz and Hofgarten were taken into account in the programmes. In 1923, Zilcher called his concert series the »Mozartfest« for the first time. Concertante opera performances became part of the programme in 1931.
During Hermann Zilcher’s tenure as the Mozartfest’s artistic director (1921 – 1944), he was himself the principal performer. Right from the start, internationally acclaimed musicians enriched the Mozartfest’s programme. Elisabeth Schumann, Adolf Busch, Carl Flesch, Alma Moodie, Elly Ney, Edwin Fischer, Maria Cebotari, Karl Böhm, Gaspar Cassadó, Julius Patzak and many more were ranked among its guests in those early years. From 1941, choreographer Friderica Derra de Moroda was responsible for the traditional »Schäferspiele« in the Hofgarten, involving singing and dancing in Baroque costumes. Marking the 150th anniversary of Mozart’s death, Hermann Zilcher was also awarded the Gold Medal of the Mozarteum Foundation Salzburg in 1941.
In the 1930s and 1940s, the Mozartfest gradually fell victim to Nazi ideology: in Würzburg, too, Mozart’s name was misappropriated to place excessive emphasis on national German identity and folk traditions. From 1942, the Nazi leisure organisation »Strength through Joy« was the Mozartfest’s coordinator. Under the name of »Mozartsommer«, the last wartime Mozartfest took place in 1944, before theatres in Germany were closed on 1 September 1944 and before the devastating air raid on Würzburg of 16 March 1945.
