Bösendorfer Festival opens with music of love and encounters

The Bösendorfer Festival in Wiener Neustadt has opened with a programme focused on love and new encounters. Spanish singer and pianist Miriam Luna performed at the opening, crossing musical genres with ease, ORF reports.

Luna, who calls Barcelona, Malaga and Vienna home, performed compositions linked to those cities, as well as music from Brazil and Argentina. Her set also included the classic jazz number “Spain” by Chick Corea. She performed in a special trio assembled for the evening at the historic Kasematten, with Martin Kelner on flamenco guitar and Jonas Zink on percussion.

Festival director Florian Krumpöck said the programme was built around love and, above all, unexpected new encounters. The festival brings music, literature and theatre together in performances he describes as evenings of emotion, depth and surprise.

Krumpöck, a concert pianist and conductor, will perform Hugo Wolf’s “Italian Songbook” with mezzo-soprano Meghan Kahts and baritone Dietrich Henschel. His solo recital will feature Mussorgsky’s “Pictures at an Exhibition.”

Actor Stefan Jürgens will present “Call It Love: Voluntary Outpourings of Love and Other Love Crazes.” Director and actor Karl Markovics will perform Karl Kraus’s “Praise of the Wrong Way of Life” with pianist Martin James Bartlett. Andrea Eckert and Philipp Jagschitz will present “Pirate Jenny,” a tribute to Lotte Lenya.

The Austrian Simone Kopmajer Quartet will close the festival at the Kasematten on February 17, 2027.