Salzburg Easter Festival

The Salzburg Easter Festival was founded by Herbert von Karajan in 1967 as a means of expanding the traditional Salzburg Festival held in August. The Easter Festival rapidly grew to become an exclusive and artistically brilliant festival. Elaborate new opera productions and the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra's extensive orchestral repertoire contributed to the Salzburg Easter Festival's renown from the very beginning.

Concept
Herbert von Karajan's fundamental idea in establishing the Easter Festival was to expand upon the festival concept in Salzburg, although the Easter Festival was never intended to be an offshoot of the Summer Festival but a festival that would develop its own personal profile. This was facilitated by first-class directors, high-caliber musicians and elaborate productions.

Prominent personalities
In addition to extraordinary conductors, the Easter Festival always focused on the exceptional virtuosity of the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra. Herbert von Karajan was in charge of the Festival up to his death in 1989. Sir Georg Solti took over as the artistic director in 1992  and 1993 and  Claudio Abbado from 1994 to 2002. Sir Simon Rattle has been the director of the Easter Festival since 2003.
Sir Simon Rattle – and before him Claudio Abbado – began to take on new artistic challenges, manifested in exemplary program planning. The management's aim was to address a new audience and make the festival accessible to people from all social ranks.

Kontrapunkte
Kontrapunkte (Counterpoints), a series of high-caliber contemporary chamber music concerts, was introduced in 1994  to contrast with the large-scale concerts performed in the Large Festival Hall. The chamber music is performed by different ensembles from the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra.
Young orchestras have also been given the opportunity to perform a special concert during the Salzburg Easter Festival since 1994.

The Salzburg Easter Festival today
The Festival begins each year on the Saturday before Palm Sunday with the opera premiere and ends on Easter Monday, when the opera is traditionally performed a second time. Six evenings of three concerts each with the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra are scheduled in between. Special concerts and the Kontrapunkte concerts are also on the program, some featuring soloists from the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra as well as other ensembles, usually offering points of contact to the opera and the orchestral concerts.