Nature awakens

The long Austrian winter is coming to an end and spring is beginning to show its best side. The end of 2024 was very intense and the beginning of the new year favourable for self-reflection and study, a retreat is always necessary to nourish inspiration. Some books and scores have enriched my library and it is always a great pleasure to discover new things, even more so by analogue means. Unfortunately, that gets lost.

Vienna has a certain morbid poetry in winter, the early darkness of the days encourages concentration and gives rise to new creative processes.

Nature awakens soon, and being outdoors is also a source of inspiration. On a walk, you will come across a plaque indicating that a certain composer or musician lived in this place. Anton Bruckner, Franz Schubert, Johannes Brahms and Antonio Vivaldi all died within a kilometre of where I live. Jean Sibelius, Hugo Wolff, Christoph Willibald Gluck, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Karol Szymanowski, Richard Strauss, Anton Dvorak... lived in my neighbourhood. And all the others I don't know yet. This place must have a special energy to attract all these geniuses. For us Viennese musicians, it is a great privilege to be surrounded by these vibrations and to be constantly reminded that there is always a higher artistic dimension.

In this stimulating atmosphere, new projects are in the pipeline, and after completing my Bruckner cycle last year, it is as if I am entering new musical territory with the release of my first CD, "Richard Strauss Days Edition". This is the prelude to my cycle of symphonic poems by Richard Strauss as Conductor in Residence of the Richard Strauss Days Garmisch-Partenkirchen, and I am particularly looking forward to my first collaboration with the Munich Radio Orchestra.