Last weekend, the Philharmonie Salzburg under conductor Elisabeth Fuchs celebrated the start of spring in the Great University Hall with the sparkling lightness of Mendelssohn's "Italian". Mendelssohn is said to have felt "euphoric and intoxicated" when he set off on his Italian travels in 1830.

25 years of the Philharmonie Salzburg - It has been around for a quarter of a century now - the Philharmonie Salzburg, which has been shaking up the cultural landscape of the city of Mozart since 1998 and has long been an integral part of Salzburg's arts scene. Founded in 1998 by the then 22-year-old Elisabeth Fuchs as the "Junge Philharmonie Salzburg" (until 2011), the orchestra initially only played two concerts a year.

Music education is known to be a special concern of conductor Elisabeth Fuchs. On the occasion of the 15th anniversary of the Children's Festival 2022, another music education project of the Salzburg Philharmonic & Children's Festival was therefore launched last year at her instigation: the Salzburg Children's and Youth Philharmonic.

Jean Sibelius' Violin Concerto, whose strikingly virtuoso final movement is one of the most famous in the violin literature, continues to exert a strong fascination on musicians and listeners alike. In concert with the Philharmonie Salzburg and Elisabeth Fuchs , the celebrated German solo violinist Alina Pogostkina demonstrated in a bravura and subtle manner why she is considered one of the world's best Sibelius interpreters.

The Austrian premiere of "Oraculum", a concerto for percussion and orchestra by contemporary Spanish composer Oriol Cruixent, was a real sensation at the weekend. The exceptional percussionist Vivi Vassileva, who has just received the Leonard Bernstein Award, brought thirty instruments to life.