It is arguable that no single figure has quite dominated the artistic scene at the Salzburg Festival to the extent that Herbert von Karajan did when he ruled the roost from the 1950s to the 80s. Riccardo Muti may well have come closest in subsequent years, so it was appropriate for him to be entrusted with a concert dedicated to Karajan's memory 30 years after the Austrian conductor's death in 1989, and performed in the venue that Karajan had such a hand in designing, the Großes Festspielhaus.
Karajan's Assumption Day concerts were a focal point of his festival planning, and so it was that on this 15 August visitors and Salzburgians put on their Sunday best for a Thursday morning performance of Verdi's Messa da Requiem, that most non-liturgical of requiems. Muti's strengths have always been in Mozart, Russian music and, of course, Verdi, and this repertoire has dominated his own contribution to Salzburg since Karajan first invited him to conduct there in 1971. Now 78, he is still a vigorous figure on the podium, conducting a performance of the Requiem that conveyed all its operatic drama yet also allowed room for consolation and contemplation.
The Vienna Philharmonic – or should one say a Vienna Philharmonic, given that the orchestra was scheduled to give three full operatic performances plus this taxing concert over just a pair of representative days of the festival and therefore must contain the personnel for at least two orchestras – responded in kind. The brass duly blazed, drums ominously thwacked and rolled, and the strings soared heavenward. Such was the might of orchestral sound at the recurrences of the Dies irae that the hundred-strong Concert Association of the Vienna State Opera Chorus struggled to be heard – this is one work where bringing together multiple massed choirs can pay off. But this is not to deny the refinement and excellent ensemble of the choral singing when balance was more helpful in the rest of the piece, which had tonal richness as well as sleek dynamic shading.