Festivals Around the Corner

In tourist-trodden Europe, many major summer music festivals have become the epicenter of a host of satellite festivals in their orbit. With the big events, e.g., Edinburgh, Salzburg, booked solid for months in advance, canny music shoppers are checking for the out-of-the-way festivals, even in the Mideast, which may be short on big-name talent but long on atmosphere. The smaller affairs can be found around almost any corner, and many offer intriguing programs.

Passau (July 27-Aug. 18) started its "European Weeks" with the hazy purpose of furthering European integration. That purpose was soon neglected, but the festival shows signs of thriving anyway, partially because of Passau's picturesque location at the confluence of the Inn, the Hz and the Danube. This yearns highlights: a performance of Bruckner's Ninth Symphony by the Bamberg Symphony under Joseph Keilberth; Bruckner's C Major Organ Prelude, played on the cathedral organ; two evenings of ballet danced by the Ljubljana Slovene National Opera and Ballet on the banks of the Danube.

Augsburg (July 30-Aug. 11) has gone Italian. When the city fathers decided four years ago to get in on the festival boom and started looking around for an uncommitted composer, they found to ;heir distress that the supply of Germans iad been exhausted: Ansbach and Leipzig lad Bach; Bonn had Beethoven; Bayreuth had Wagner; Munich had Richard Strauss. Partly because they wanted a :omposer who had written enough to feed the festival for years, the Augsburgers aicked Verdi, and reminded visitors that :he city was once Germany's gateway to Italian commerce. This year Augsburg is offering Verdi's Otello and his rarely performed Battle of Legnano on an open-air stage with the city's famed medieval Red ate as a backdrop.

Schloss Herrenchiemsee (through September) got into the festival business years before the war with a series of candlelight concerts at the imposing castle, which is often passed off as a medieval relic, although it was actually built by mad King Ludwig II of Bavaria only 70 years ago. The specialty at Schloss Herrenchiemsee (near Munich) is low-calorie chamber music, e.g., Mozart's Eine Kleine Nachtmusik, Haydn, Boccherini, Dittersdorf, played by a string quartet beneath the castle's crystal mirrors and chandeliers.

Dubrovnik (July 1-Aug. 31) is the summer gathering place for Yugoslavia's best singers, dancers and composers. The festival's staple program performed by both visiting and local artists contains such works as Mussorgsky's Boris Godunov and Tchaikovsky's Swan Lake, with a sprinkling of more modern works by composers such as Ernest Bloch and Manuel de Falla. A big annual drawing card: a great variety of fine wines from all parts of Yugoslavia.

Santander (Aug. 2-Sept. 2) does not depend so much on tourists as some of the others. Purpose of the festival, say Spanish officials, is to improve the "cultural education" of the local citizens, who fight one another for seats. Scene: the city's 4,000-capacity Plaza Porticada, a onetime bull ring, canvas-roofed for the occasion. Among this year's impressive attractions: the Orchestre de la Suisse Romande, the Royal Opera Ballet of Stockholm. The Spanish government underwrites the festival's annual deficit of 2,000,000 pesetas (some $60,000), pegs prices so low that fishermen and day laborers by the thousands can attend.

Baalbek (July 25-Sept. i) offers the most exotic of the newer festivals, organized chiefly to show off the picturesque little town near Beirut, Lebanon, which boasts some of the best-preserved Roman ruins in existence. At festival time, Baalbek's streets are emptied of the sheep and goats usually being driven to market by Arab tribesmen, are filled instead with foreign cars. This year's highlights: Rome's Santa Cecilia orchestra, two nights of Lebanese dances and village songs. More dramatic than the music are the floodlit temples of Jupiter and Bacchus, which form a backdrop for the performers. Last season there were so many visitors that the government's Department of Antiquities had to move a 60-ton fallen temple block to make room for more seats.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.