Press
The 2026 Mozart Week Festival is marking the 270th birthday of Salzburg’s immortal genius loci | in Salzburg between 22 January to 1 February 2026
Every Mozart Week Festival is already a celebration of the life and works of Salzburg’s genius loci, but 2026 marks no fewer than two great Mozart anniversaries. Not only does the 2026 Festival coincide with the 270th anniversary of Mozart’s birth but it is seventy years since the world’s most important Mozart Festival was summoned into life in 1956. The Festival’s intendant, Rolando Villazón, recalls that “Mozart first saw the light of the world in Salzburg in 1756 but it was not until 1791, with his all too early death, that events came full circle and he achieved immortality. Mozart: lux æterna is the motto of the 2026 Mozart Week Festival and we shall be celebrating this ‘perpetual light’, giving us two good reasons to present a new production of the composer’s penultimate opera, The Magic Flute. Our aim is to recapture the magic of Mozart’s masterpiece and to explore its imaginary and imaginative world, while combining these elements with a subtle tribute to the composer and to the idea of his slipping away into a world of radiant immortality. And so magic and the year 1791 will form the common thread that links together our concerts, our fully staged productions, our Trazom events and everything else that makes up our programme in 2026.”
Mozart: lux æterna – at the heart of our 2026 Mozart Week Festival is a new production of the most popular opera of all time: Mozart’s The Magic Flute. The director is Rolando Villazón, and Roberto González-Monjas will be conducting the Salzburg Mozarteum Orchestra. These fully staged performances will be framed by a full programme of around seventy other events. The orchestral concerts and chamber recitals will, as always, showcase the most eminent performers but we shall also be celebrating far more than this with two world premieres, two farewells and a number of other anniversaries. Two new works by the young Salzburg composer Karim Zech will be receiving their first performances, while two legendary ensembles that will be retiring from the concert platform in 2026 will be appearing one last time at the Mozart Week Festival. They are the Cappella Andrea Barca and the Hagen Quartet. Two long-standing friends of the Festival who share a birthday with Mozart will be joining the group of handpicked artists who are coming here next January: Renaud Capuçon and Emmanuel Pahud. Our anniversary programme is rounded off by a puppet show, live music, performance art, films including rarities about Mozart, readings, interviews with artists, a pub quiz, family concerts and lots more besides. The first festival of the new year has been bringing the world’s finest Mozartians to Salzburg since 1956 and 2026 will be no exception. Among the artists we are expecting are Ádám Fischer, Igor Levit, Karina Canellakis, María Dueñas, Robin Ticciati, Magdalena Kožená, Daniel Ottensamer, Jordi Savall and Le Concert des Nations, Maria João Pires, the Danish Chamber Orchestra with Emily D’Angelo, the Chamber Orchestra of Europe, Christina Pluhar and her ensemble L’Arpeggiata, Philippe Jaroussky, Xavier de Maistre, Avi Avatal, Daniel Hope, Iveta Apkalna, Kit Armstrong and, of course, the Vienna Philharmonic, which has been the Mozart Week Festival’s steadfast companion since 1956.
You can download the press release, programme and photos in the download area below:
