The Europakonzert in a Baroque Jewel
The Berliner Philharmoniker at Schloss Esterházy The Europakonzert in a Baroque JewelThe Berliner Philharmoniker at Schloss Esterházy

The thirty-fifth Europakonzert takes place at Schloss Esterházy, a site of tremendous musical and historical importance, for many years the home of Joseph Haydn. The programme under Kirill Petrenko on 1 May opens, fittingly, with one of Haydn’s works. A brief look at Schloss Esterházy and its musical significance.

The cheeky expressions on the stone faces of the mascarons that peer down on visitors from just beneath the cornices add a touch of humour to the magnificent façade of the palace in the Austrian town of Eisenstadt. The Esterházy family had only just been ennobled by the emperor when they began rebuilding a medieval hunting lodge in 1663, turning it into a palatial home remarkable for its Baroque opulence. Their architects were Italian, reflecting the prevailing taste at court.

There are pilasters, curved window decorations and ornamental balustrades, while busts of Hungarian kings and army commanders look down from the niches between the piano nobile and the second storey. The building as a whole is crowned by four massive towers and a covered promenade. Inside, the salons are decorated in a late seventeenth-century Far Eastern style, while behind it there is a landscaped park with a picturesque temple, an obelisk and an orangery. But the centrepiece of this exquisite ensemble is the Haydn Hall.

With their decision to appoint Haydn their court Kapellmeister, the Esterházy family carved a place for themselves in the annals of music. The composer served Prince Nikolaus “the Magnificent” for a total of twenty-nine years from 1761 to 1790 and is believed to have conducted over a thousand concerts here.

The banqueting hall at Eisenstadt measures 28 x 14 metres (92 x 46 feet). Its walls are decorated with elegant garlands of flowers and grisaille medallions, while its ceiling depicts scenes from classical mythology. The hall is famous for its excellent acoustics. The timber construction of the painted ceiling and the historical parquet flooring ensure the best possible acoustic conditions. There is seating for 650, and some one hundred performances are given here every year.

Concert programme from Haydn to Tchaikovsky

The Berliner Philharmoniker’s guest appearance here is on 1 May. Since 1991, the orchestra has marked the anniversary of its foundation with a concert that has been given in various venues. After Barcelona in 2023, Tsinandali in Georgia in 2024 and Bari in southern Italy in 2025, it is now the turn of Schloss Esterházy to provide the setting for this year’s gala matinee. The concert will begin with an overture by Haydn, the palace’s genius loci. This is followed by Beethoven’s Second Symphony, one of the key works of the Viennese Classical period.  And the orchestra’s chief conductor has also chosen two works by Stravinsky and Tchaikovsky that are especially well-suited to this corner of south-eastern Austria, where the closeness to Slavic culture can be felt at every turn.

Schloss Esterházy is located at the very heart of Eisenstadt, the capital of the province of Burgenland. With only 16,000 inhabitants, the town feels almost like a village. The capital, Vienna, is only an hour-long drive away, but in spite of its proximity, this area bordering Hungary, Slovakia and Slovenia has always been poor and thinly populated, remote from the major trade routes.

In the seventeenth century, Turkish troops caused widespread devastation. And from 1781 onwards many Protestants from Salzburg and Tyrol sought refuge here from the ravages of the Counterreformation. Together with stragglers from the Balkans, they formed a motley multi-ethnic community that shared a similar faith. After the Second World War the most south-easterly of Austria’s regions became a capitalist outpost in the shadow of the Iron Curtain.

The inspiration of the provinces

Haydn was conscious of the isolation of life in provincial Austria — a circumstance he later described as both limiting and creatively liberating: “I was cut off from the world – there was no one near me to torment me or make me doubt in myself, so I was forced to become original.” Many of Haydn’s compositions from his years in Eisenstadt are characterized by their love of experimentation and their sense of humour. In 1761, right at the start of his tenure, the young composer surprised and delighted his employer with a cycle of symphonies that revolves around the different times of the day: morning, midday and evening all find musical expression in these works.

Eleven years later Haydn revealed a rebellious streak with his “Farewell Symphony”, in which he questioned his prince’s explicit orders. Nikolaus had had a magnificent summer residence built for himself at Fertőd on the banks of the Neusiedler See and as soon as the weather was warm enough the entire court decamped there, only the musicians in the court chapel were told that they could not take their families with them. When the prince’s stay in 1772 seemed to drag on forever, Haydn protested in the name of his homesick musicians: during the final movement of his “Farewell Symphony” each of the players in turn rose to his feet, snuffed out the candles on his music stand and followed his colleagues out of the room. The prince took the hint and allowed the orchestra to return home to Eisenstadt.

Haydn was grateful for his position as Kapellmeister with the Esterházy family. He had begun his musical career as a boy chorister in St Stephan’s Cathedral in Vienna, but once his voice had broken, he had to get by as best he could as a teacher and as a private secretary until he finally found a position with the aristocratic Count Morzin. After four years in the count’s service, Haydn switched to the court chapel in Eisenstadt and remained there until 1790, writing operas, Masses, sinfonias and a total of 126 trios for the baryton, a curious and fashionable instrument with the body of a bass viol and numerous additional resonating strings that Nikolaus enjoyed playing in his free time.

It was in the late 1770s that Haydn wrote the Overture with which Kirill Petrenko is opening the concert at Schloss Esterházy in 2026. We do not know the opera for which Haydn originally intended it but its composer, pragmatic to a fault, later recycled it as the final movement of his Symphony no. 53. This was a work that brought its composer’s name to the attention of the rest of Europe, as it was disseminated in manuscript copies throughout Austria, southern Germany and Italy, while printed editions appeared in Berlin, Amsterdam, London and Paris. So successful was this work that when Nikolaus died in 1790, Haydn was able to embark on a third career as a freelance musician. He was already fifty-eight years old when he accepted an invitation to visit London in 1791. “My language is understood all over the world,” the composer observed.