HHere the director is filming. Alexander Steinbeis (48), who has been responsible for the Kissinger Sommer music festival since 1986, knows about the importance of social media as a presentation platform. Just like many of his artists. So after each meeting, he populates Instagram, Facebook and Twitter with his cell phone out – you’re just a small, extended events arm of the city administration. Only on TikTok, where his visitors are rarely found, he says.
Artists and their audience are looking for proximity to people – and that is what the many, many festivals in Germany claim. Which, of course, after two years of the pandemic, after isolation and weaning, have to re-motivate their regular visitors, grab and calm the procrastinating, and have to get the curious excited.
Nothing, however, beats the live vibrating Strauss waltzes performed by the Vienna Symphoniker (once the spa orchestra here) under Germany’s youngest general music director (in Wuppertal), Styrian Patrick Hahn. In between, Bayreuth’s Sieglinde Lise Davidsen sings Richard Strauss’ “Four Last Songs” with a voluminous, dark soprano. All this in the wonderfully wooden regent building in the sparkling fresh Unesco cultural heritage of the noble, spacious, well-kept Kissinger spa facilities.
They are first class monuments. Multifaceted, lively, harmoniously embedded in the spacious spa park, which the Saale flows through, including the rose garden. Architect Max Littmann was responsible for various royal Bavarian spas, as well as for the Munich Hofbräuhaus, the Prinzregententheater and the Stuttgart Opera.
You can show off with that. This is why the old world spa, where Sisi, King Ludwig, Prince Ferenc Rákóczi and Otto von Bismarck once shared drinking cups, has been left behind a little in recent decades due to a lack of health insurance customers and the border region in the north-eastern tip of Bavaria, and is already on the rise in wellness again. The music festival, which focuses on five weekends in June and July (but also the days in between) and was shaped by the legendary principal Kari Kahl-Wolfsjäger for 30 years, also contributed to this. Always with a hat, she has found many local connections and sponsors, has a keen nose for young classical stars such as Cecilia Bartoli, Lang Lang, Martin Helmchen and Igor Levit and has them perform here regularly.
Relationships were forged with the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra, the Bamberg Symphony Orchestra (which also performs here during the year), the German Symphony Orchestra and the Hessian Radio Symphony Orchestra, gems such as those regularly performed by Wolfgang Rihm, Aribert Reimann or Jörg Widmann workshop for contemporary songs, equipped with world premieres.
The Schnitzel Affair
It should continue like this, but of course a festival has to keep up with the times. The rustic, busy ex-digital minister Dorothee Bär vouches for this on the board of trustees, but in Bad Kissingen a schnitzel alone can cause a discussion. This is what “Vienna-Budapest-Prague-Bad Kissingen”, the Klangvierstädteneck called for 2022, was supposed to visualize as a breaded piece of veal with lemon and parsley on a bed of piano keys. And triggered a small controversy, not only at the festival showcase competition in Ludwigstrasse.
It is only intended to point out that the eleven swimming pools in Germany, the Czech Republic, Austria, Italy, France, Belgium and England, which were named World Heritage Sites shortly after Steinbeis was elected by the Unesco Commission for their spa facilities, are also planning great things together in the future in culture. But these bonds have only just been forged.
Of course, Kissingen has a unique infrastructure that makes musical encounters possible within walking distance of most hotels. In addition to the neoclassical regent building with its two side foyers, including the shrill aftereight green columned hall, there is the frescoed courtyard for casual lounge hanging out on warm summer nights, for which the green area in front of the casino is also suitable. There is the intimate, playful Rossini Hall (the composer also stayed here once), the Neo-Rococo Kurtheater, which is also green, the town church and various outdoor venues.
For example, in the pretty little state spa of Bad Brückenau, where King Ludwig I once escaped from his wife who stayed in Kissingen to Lola Montez. Two springs named after the two are still reminiscent of the royal liaison, which was certainly not still with healing waters. And cellist Alban Gerhard celebrated his 30th Kissingen anniversary there with his piano partner Markus Becker with a fine afternoon concert of Janacek, Schubert and Dvorak.
Alexander Steinbeis has a budget of 2.5 million euros including income. This year he planned conservatively because of the unpredictability of the pandemic, but he did make a lot of effort. Especially on the weekends, which are preceded by an introduction, things really get going. There are preludes by orchestra musicians for free and outside, for example at the Sisi monument, which can only be reached by a brisk walk. The morning after, the artistic director invites you “to a café” with artists. On Saturdays there are two plus one children’s events and on Sundays there are three thematically coordinated concerts.
Then Simon Rattle’s wife Magdalena Kozena says that she enjoys being the boss on stage in view of her husband, who is amateur at the piano. 300 Kissingers come together to form the Symphonic Mob. Mayors and Rose Queen are in constant use. The German Symphony Orchestra (where Steinbeis worked as orchestra director for a long time) even comes with its very popular honorary conductor Kent Nagano.
Read Sisi and Franz Joseph
After the kuk sound delicacies, the Sisi/Franz Joseph stars Dominque Devenport and Janik Schümann read from the latest RTL soap as a night studio, who interrupted filming in Latvia for the second season, to piano music from their letters and poems. And the Dutch Jussen piano brothers demonstrate the next morning what today means not only juvenile music-making excellence, but also the best ability to communicate. When they applaud, even the rollator brigade in the corner wobbles.
Of course, at the moment Steinbeis also has to see that his more spontaneous audience is coming. But the trend towards the regional, the uncertain world situation, the new meaning of his job, the lively local gastronomy and a younger, spectator-oriented generation of artists work for him. So it doesn’t always have to be Salzburg in summer.