Salzburg Festival Opening Concert with the Gustav Mahler Jugendorchester

(Vienna, 09.07.2021) We do it again: it is with great joy that we can - finally! - officially share the news that the GUSTAV MAHLER JUGENDORCHESTER will perform the opening concert of the Salzburg Festival 2021.

Together with 13 musicians from the ORF Radio-Symphonieorchester Wien - RSO Wien and with the Wiener Singverein, the GMJO will, with 91 selected musicians from 18 European countries, perform Benjamin Britten’s War Requiem at the Felsenreitschule Salzburg on 18 July 2021.

Mirga Gražinytė-Tyla, music director of the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra and winner of the 2012 Young Conductors Award of the Salzburg Festival, will conduct.

Benjamin Britten’s War Requiem was written for and premiered by the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra (CBSO) and Chorus at Coventry Cathedral in 1962. The CBSO was invited to perform this work at this year’s opening concert of the Salzburg Festival. Sadly, the CBSO had to cancel the concert given the current UK quarantine rules.

Within a few days, following the request from the Salzburg Festival to step in at shortest notice, the GMJO managed to form an orchestra of current and former musicians, together with the ORF Radio-Symphonieorchester Wien - RSO Wien, which shall perform Benjamin Britten’s masterpiece.

Whilst we are sincerely sorry for our professional colleagues from the CBSO, we are extremely happy about and grateful for the overwhelming response from our musicians. And we believe that it has a strong artistic and symbolic relevance that young musicians from almost 20 European countries will perform this masterpiece.

Rehearsals with GMJO assistant conductor TOBIAS WOEGERER and with GMJO tutors FRANZ-MARKUS SIEGERT, LEONARD FREY-MAIBACH, BERNHARD HEINRICHS, IAN BOUSFIELD, and RAYMOND CURFS will start on next Monday at the Musikverein Wien.

After the triumphant concerts of the GMJO under DANIELE GATTI for the re-opening of the Musikverein Wien in May 2021, the GMJO proves, once again, that we can make things work in extremely challenging times.

This is what the GMJO stands for.