Lockenhaus Festival

The Lockenhaus Chamber Music Festival (Lockenhaus Kammermusikfest) is an annual Austrian festival, founded in 1981 by Gidon Kremer and Josef Herowitsch. The event occupies three venues in the town of Lockenhaus: Burg Lockenhaus castle, Church of St. Nikolaus, and the old monastery. An avid opera enthusiast, Rev. Josef Herowitsch started organizing music concerts in his baroque church in 1974. Gidon Kremer participated in a Lockenhauser Konzerte during his Austrian tour two years later and had been returning every year since then. He would often invite fellow Russian musicians to perform in Lockenhaus with him, including David Geringas, Andrei Gavrilov, Elisabeth Leonskaja, and Oleg Maisenberg. In 1981, Herowitsch persuaded the violinist to co-found a summer international Lockenhaus Chamber Music Festival. The festival aimed to present chamber music for small audiences in a less commercial, more academic setting. Gidon Kremer became an Artistic Director, while Herowitsch served as an Administrator. By 1987, Lockenhaus Festival expanded to a European tour and US concert at the Metropolitan Museum Of Art in New York. In 2011, Gidon Kremer passed on the director's chair to Nicolas Altstaedt. Under his supervision, Lockenhaus Festival went on tour again with a small ensemble performing at Mozarteum, Salzburg, Wiener Konzerthaus, Concertgebouw, Amsterdam, Schloss Elmau and other prestigious venues across the Europe. The New York Times praised Lockenhaus as "probably one of the two most refined music festivals of all." According to Kremer, the event may be seen as a European successor of renowned Marlboro Music Festival in Vermont, US. Some of the notable performers over the years include Vladimir Ashkenazy, Nikolaus Harnoncourt, Heinz Holliger, Cho-Liang Lin, and András Schiff.