Music: Summer Music (Europe)

• Share

The grand tour has been fashionable for more than two centuries, but the trails have changed with the years. The gourmet trail has been blazed from snails (Paris) to schnitzel (Vienna) to cheese (Gruyére). Health was pursued at the healing waters of Spa, Belgium, and Baden-Baden, Germany. Art was tracked from Amsterdam to Florence to Athens. A temperance tour arranged by young Thomas Cook (from Leicester to Loughborough) in 1841 was followed by many a wine-tasting round (the Loire and the Palatinate). But until recently, music was the main attraction only at such famed centers as Bayreuth and Salzburg. Today the music trail is one of the most popular in Europe. This summer well over 50 towns will take part in the biggest music festival season to date.

The season was off to a running start this month when Florence opened its 17th Maggio Musicale. Like most of the bigger festivals, it combined showy elegance with serious endeavor. Gaudiest attractions were operas with attractive melodies shaded by silly plots: Spontini's rarely performed Agnes von Hohenstaufen, Weber's Euryanthe and Puccini's Girl of the Golden West. Euryanthe was presented in its uncut version and the audience learned to appreciate the program note from a Weber contemporary: "This man writes for eternity and so his operas never end." Other festival events were concerts under Wilhelm Furtwängler, Guido Cantelli and Bruno Walter.

Among other music festivals in Europe this summer: One of the newest is Rouen's"Great Hours" (May 30-June11), centering on a famous short-time resident, Joan of Arc, and featuring Honegger's opera-oratorio, Jeanne d'Arc au Bucher (TIME, Jan. 12, 1948). Oldest festival of all is England's Three Choirs Festival, this year of Worcester (Sept. 5-10); it began about 1715 and has been going (with time out for wars) ever since. Using some 300 singers from Worcester, Gloucester and Hereford, the program is designed to satisfy British love of massed voices, but also includes visiting big-name instrumentalists.

Visitors at the biggest festivals will hear much of the same excellent music from the standard concert repertory that they heard during the winter at home. In Prades (June 7-20), the Casals Festival will offer Beethoven chamber music (top visiting artist: Rudolf Serkin). At Amsterdam, The Hague and Scheveninge (June 15-July 15), visiting conductors will lead the Concertgebouw, The Hague Residentie and BBC symphonies. At Bayreuth (July 22-Aug. 22), Wagner's two grandsons will mount seven of the master's music dramas. Salzburg (July 25-Aug. 30), as usual, will specialize in Mozart, but will also include the world premiere of Penelope, a new opera by a contemporary Swiss composer, Rolf Liebermann. At Edinburgh (Aug. 22-Sept. 11), six orchestras from five countries will lead the festivities, which include opera, ballet, theater, films and art displays.

There will also be scattered festivals of more specialized interest:

Haifa (May 30-June 10): 28th festival of the International Society for Contemporary Music. Four orchestra and two chamber-music concerts of compositions by contemporary composers from around the world, beginning with the world premiere of Odyssey of a Race, written for Israel by Brazil's Heitor Villa-Lobos.