Martin Achrainer's "warm, lyrical voice" has won the praise of the newspaper Der Neue Merker. In the nearly ten years in which he has been performing at opera houses the Tyrolean baritone has developed a wide repertoire. In addition to his classical studies at the University of Music and Performing Arts in Vienna he also received training in acting and in musicals. This explains his great versatility, which has already been demonstrated in roles such as Leporello (Don Giovanni), Count Almaviva (Le Nozze di Figaro) and Marcello (La Bohème). Since the 2006/2007 season Achrainer has been a member of the ensemble at Linz Landestheater. He has given guest appearances internationally - in Finland, Japan and the USA. He is equally interested in the jazz-inspired music of Leonard Bernstein and Kurt Weill, and in New Music. It was for him that Philip Glass composed the title role in his opera Kepler, which was premiered in 2009 in Linz under the baton of Dennis Russel Davies. His awards include the Hugo Wolf Prize and the German Young Performer Award in 2004.

Don't miss a video!

On this page you will find all the videos that have been produced as part of the Bregenz Festival. The archive is chronological. To open a video, just click on the link.

The Creation of André Chénier Duration: 12:35 minutes

Airealistic in conjunction with choreographer Lynne Page and the Bregenz Festival in Austria is looking for MALE “stunt dancers” for the open air opera production on Lake Constance of “André Chénier” directed by Keith Warner. Artists should have acrobatic training in gymnastics, circus and/or martial arts. They should have the ability to swim in less than ideal conditions and should be able to jump/flip into water from 7 meters. Artists should be proficient at learning choreography. Artists should be very comfortable performing at heights up to 20 meters.

We are looking for:

• Stunt Dancers w/stage fighting experience or training
• Stunt Dancers/gymnasts w/swimming and diving experience
• Aerialists w/harness experience

The contract will begin rehearsing June 26th in Bregenz, Austria. A maximum of 26 performances will run from July 19th to August 19th 2012. There is rehearsal and show pay.

Please submit your CV, photos & any media via email to: Casting@airealistic.com

This will be an invited audition April 19th in London, UK. LOCATION TBD. No compensation for travel and accommodation will be paid.

Vienna Symphony Orchestra 

23 July - 7.30 p.m.

Duration: 2 1/4 hours, incl. break

Conductor: Markus Stenz
Soprano: Gisela Stille

• F. Schubert – D. Glanert: Einsamkeit (D 620) for soprano and orchestra
• A. Bruckner: Symphony No. 5 in B flat major
  

30 July - 7.30 p.m.

Duration: 1 1/2 hours, incl. break

Conductor: Jacek Kaspszyk
Violoncello: Christoph Stradner

• M. Weinberg: Concerto for cello and orchestra in C minor, op. 43
• S. Prokofiev: Symphony No. 5 in B flat major, Opus 100

Vienna Symphony Orchestra Day

5 August – 12.30 pm to 4 pm, in and around the Festspielhaus

Members of the Vienna Symphony Orchestra play a varied selection of works from music history and invite you to listen and linger.

Admission free

6 August - 7.30 p.m.

Duration: 2 hours, incl. break

Conductor and Chansonier: HK Gruber
Soprano: Gun-Brit Barkmin
Tenor I: Alexander Kaimbacher
Tenor II: Christian Drescher
Baritone: Adrian Clarke
Bass: Richard Angas

• H. Eisler: Suite No. 3 Kuhle Wampe; Angst from Höllenangst
• K. Weill/B. Brecht: Die sieben Todsünden
  
• HK Gruber: Frankenstein!!

Curated by HK Gruber

Prices

Vorarlberg Symphony Orchestra 

12 August – 11 a.m., Festspielhaus

Duration: 1 3/4 hours, incl. break

Conductor: Gérard Korsten

• D. Glanert: Theatrum bestiarum
• A. Bruckner: Symphony No. 4 in E flat major
  

Prices

Festival Mass

22 July – 10 am, the parish church of Herz-Jesu

Conductor: Wolfgang Schwendinger
Soloists of the Bregenz Festival
Herz-Jesu Church Choir
Members of the Kornmarkt Choir, Bregenz

Admission free

Solitude, Frankenstein and "God's Musician" 

Works by Anton Bruckner, Detlev Glanert and HK Gruber top the bill in the orchestral concerts of 2012.

On 23 July, the well-known German conductor Markus Stenz conducts Detlev Glanert's reworking of Schubert's song Einsamkeit, premiered in 2010, as well as Anton Bruckner's 5th Symphony.

The concert on 30 July sees the welcome return of Teodor Currentzis, whose musical direction of Weinberg's opera The Passenger at the 2010 Bregenz Festival caused a sensation. In the concert Currentzis will conduct Weinberg's Concerto for Cello and Orchestra in C minor.

On 6 August, the Austrian composer and conductor HK Gruber will take baton and microphone into his own hands. In addition to works by Hanns Eisler and Kurt Weill the concert includes his own composition Frankenstein!! which features a rapid succession of blue-blooded bloodsuckers, mad scientists, silver-screen villains and ogres out of children's books.

Anton Bruckner's 4th Symphony and Detlev Glanert's Theatrum bestiarum can be heard in the Vorarlberg Symphony Orchestra concert on 12 August conducted by chief conductor Gérard Korsten.

WIZARD OF SOUND: DETLEV GLANERT

Detlev Glanert's music is both dramatically effective and emotionally compelling; among his chief influences are Gustav Mahler and Maurice Ravel. Einsamkeit is Glanert's orchestration of one of Schubert's longest lieder: composed in 1818, the song went far beyond the formal and harmonic framework that was usual for the genre at that time. Theatrum bestiarum (2005) is, in Glanert's words, "a kind of anatomical preparation of man as beast: a glimpse into the inner soul of the monster that people can sometimes become."

"GOD'S MUSICIAN": ANTON BRUCKNER

They called him "God's musician" – a nickname that may appear very apt to anyone who has heard a work of his performed on the giant organ of the Monastery of St Florian in Upper Austria, on which he himself played and under which he was buried. Born in 1824, Anton Bruckner is seen as one of the most innovative composers of his time. His music is rooted in his deep religious feeling, its monumental style lending it an almost cultic character.

The uncertainty of our gaze
Makulatur by Paulus Hochgatterer

Guest performances by the Schauspielhaus, Vienna

Premiere on 9 August – 7.30 pm

A woman learns various operations and prices of cosmetic surgery by heart. A man is captivated by every moment on the CCTV screen when, unnoticed, the surveillance cameras halt and for a few seconds things happen which nobody can guess. A policeman's fear of not finding a parking space assumes unimagined proportions. On top of that a girl goes missing.

What do I see when I look closely, and what in the end have I actually perceived? These questions are asked by Paulus Hochgatterer – child psychiatrist and prose writer – in his new play Makulatur, written in response to a commission from the Schauspielhaus, Vienna. With his characteristically sharp wit, he investigates the mechanisms of perception and denial of reality – as well as that abyss which we begin to discern far off when we force ourselves to observe very closely. "And isn't that which we grandiloquently call our identity," Hochgatterer asks, "in fact a mere chimera?"

Paulus Hochgatterer, born in Amstetten (Lower Austria) in 1961, is a child psychiatrist and celebrated author who lives and works in Vienna. His main characters are often people whose behaviour follows no normal course but goes far beyond what may be expected.

With Hochgatterer's latest work Makulatur, the Vienna Schauspielhaus returns to the Bregenz Festival after its great success with Orphans in 2011, this time performing at the Werkstattbühne in the Festspielhaus.

Further performances: 10 and 11 August - 7.30 pm 

Price: 26 euros

Co-production with Landestheater Linz.

For two singers, two actors, two dancers and instruments

Music by Detlev Glanert

Text prepared by Carolyn Sittig from the diaries of Vaslav Nijinsky in a German translation by Alfred Frank

Premiere on 4 August 2012 - 7.30 pm
Duration: 90 minutes, no interval

Virtuosity, genius and insanity

The diary of Nijinsky is based on excerpts from the diaries which the famous Polish-Russian dancer and choreographer Vaslav Nijinsky (1888 or 1890 to 1950) kept from 19 January to 4 March 1919 following his final public appearance in St Moritz and before he was committed to an asylum. The diary of Nijinsky entries are fascinating in that they constitute an exact record of advancing schizophrenia, a commentary already at the moment of writing.

BETWEEN MELODRAMA AND OPERA

Midway between prose, melodrama and opera, The diary of Nijinsky is a work of music theatre in which Glanert shows a highly gifted individual inexorably crossing the border between genius and insanity.

Further performance
7 August 2012 - 7.30 pm 

Co-production with Landestheater Linz

29 July – 11 am, Seestudio

]Prague Philharmonic Chorus
Speaker: Paulus Hochgatterer

•  Dmitri Shostakovich: Ten Poems on Texts by Revolutionary Poets for mixed chorus op. 88
  

5 August – 11 am, Seestudio

EOS Quartett Wien
Speaker: Kathrin Röggla

• Ludwig van Beethoven: Quartet op.18 No. 4 in C minor
• Detlev Glanert: 2nd String Quartet Pas de Quatre

11 August – 7.30 pm, Seestudio

Piano: Aaron Pilsan
Speaker: Michael Krüger

• Ludwig van Beethoven: Eroica Variations op. 35
• Johannes Brahms: Ballades op. 10
• Frédéric Chopin: Etudes op. 10/12 ("Revolutionary Etude"), op. 10/6, op. 25/12
  

Duration of each concert: 60 minutes
Ticket price: 22 euros

1+1=1

Pierluigi Billone
Petra Stump and Heinz-Peter Linshalm, bass clarinet

"One drop plus one drop equals a bigger drop, not two drops!," says the lunatic and hermit Domenico in Andrei Tarkovsky's film Nostalghia in explanation of the inscription "1+1=1", while pouring two drops of olive oil into his hand. Italian composer Pierluigi Billone has adopted this formula as a title of a work that points to a more profound understanding of "oneness". It explores the manifold possibilities of two bass clarinets, which merge into one unified sound just like two drops.

The project 1+1=1 was conceived by the composer with the two clarinettists, who are both based in Vorarlberg, and the work has been performed several times and recorded for CD. The composer will attend the concert himself and will speak about the project with the musicians.

Of darkness and silence

Ensemble Lux
Works by Luigi Nono and Georg Friedrich Haas

A late work by Luigi Nono explores the boundary between sound and silence. The piece alludes to poems by Hölderlin that are dedicated to his great love, who he named Diotima. Quotations from music by Verdi, Beethoven and from medieval music are woven into the fabric of a composition which musically revolves around the fundamental questions "Where am I and who am I?" In this music, which at times is barely audible, Nono seeks to externalise memories as well as the pain and the hope to be found in the music of the past. For some time now the Vorarlberg composer Georg Friedrich Haas has experimented with the possibilities of making music in the dark. His Third String Quartet is played in complete darkness. The musicians can neither read the music nor see their fellow instrumentalists. They are seated far apart from one another, around the audience, in the four corners of the concert hall. The audience in consequence not only hears what is played but also senses the energy of what is not played; the silent communication between the musicians in the performance space is itself part of the work. The young virtuoso Ensemble Lux from Vienna returns to Bregenz after its successful concerts in Art of Our Times in 2008 and 2010.