Salzburg

Every year since 1956, Salzburg has hosted Mozartwoche, or Mozart Week, an event created on the 200th anniversary of the composer’s birth that annually brings together some of the world’s top composers and musicians. The enormous success of this festival of Baroque and classical music has allowed the celebrations to extend to more than a week, although the events that honour the musical genius usually coincide with his birthday, on 27 January. The Mozarteum Foundation is always in charge of organising Mozart Week, which runs from 23 January to 2 February in 2025. Under the artistic direction of Mexican tenor Rolando Villazón, its programme is aimed at establishing a dialogue between composers such as Monteverdi, Bach, Handel and Haydn and Mozart himself, whose own artistic production was enormously influenced by these great musicians.

The opening concert, on 23 January at the Großer Saal of the Mozarteum Foundation, conducted by the Spaniard Roberto González-Monjas, will featuresthe participation of artists such as soprano Lauren Snouffer and pianist Gabriela Montero. The programme will include works by Salieri, Haydn and Mozart, such as his famous Piano Concerto No. 20 in D minor, K. 466. Other events during Mozart Week will include several unique operas and theatrical performances. One of the epicentres of the festival is the Salzburg Marionette Theatre, whose puppets will appear on 25-26 January in shows such as La finta giardiniera, which was composed by Mozart for the 1775 Munich carnival. Another highlight is the Vienna Philharmonic, which will perform on three dates at the Großes Festspielhaus in Salzburg: on 25 January, conductor Ádám Fischer and piano virtuoso Igor Levit will present La Passione by Haydn and Prague by Mozart. On the 27th, conductor Thomas Guggeis and soprano Sonya Yoncheva will perform Bach’s Brandenburg Concerto No 1, Cleopatra’s three arias to Julius Caesar from Handel’s Giulio Cesare and Mozart’s Adagio and Fugue in C minor together with the Symphony in G minor. The celebration will finish on 2 February with conductor Oksana Lyniv, tenor Juan Diego Flórez and violinist Rainer Honeck bringing works by Bortniansky, Mozart and Händel to the stage.

Other great events will include multiple performances of Orpheus by Monteverdi on 24, 26 and 31 January and a performance of the Goldberg Variations in a concert by Fazıl Say on 26 January in the Great Hall of the Mozarteum Foundation. Mozart’s birthday will also be celebrated here on the 27th with an organ concert that will include one of his compositions along with works by Bach and Handel. The icing on the cake will be the opening of the doors of Mozart’s birthplace to all visitors for guided tours and a special event on the afternoon of the 27th. It’s an invitation to all who wish to celebrate the birthday of the genius as he himself would have celebrated it.

Innsbruck

Over in Innsbruck, visitors can enjoy one of the most spectacular carnivals in Europe. The Innsbruck Carnival, in a tradition going back centuries, is one of the most iconic cultural events in the Tyrol region and a way of bidding farewell to winter while symbolically welcoming in spring. With dates stretching from Epiphany on 6 January to Ash Wednesday on 5 March, the city and surrounding villages are transformed into settings for parades, theatrical performances and ceremonies full of colour and mysticism.

The inhabitants of this region define their carnival festivities as a celebration of the light of the warm months against the darkness of the long winter, of the victory of good over evil. Each town or city has its own traditions, but a common denominator that unites the character of the Tyrolean carnival is the arrival of monsters, carnival figures with enormous heads or mythological figures who invade the streets with parades or symbolic struggles, and who interact with the local population. The masks and costumes retain enormous cultural and craft-making importance, as most of them are handmade and passed down from generation to generation. Some of these carnival events, such as the Schemenlaufen in the city of Imst or the Rumer Muller Parade – which only takes place every four years – have been recognised as an Intangible Cultural Heritage by Unesco.

This year, the Austrian Tyrol has a programme featuring the Telfer Schleicherlaufen, an event that only occurs every five years and attracts tens of thousands of visitors. The parade will take place on 2 February and the protagonists will be the Schleicher (marauders), the Wilden (savages) and the Laternenträger (bearers of light). A total of 500 masked men will roam in groups through the streets of Telfs along with decorated floats, proclaiming the arrival of the carnival and interacting with visitors from early morning. This celebration, in its current format, was also declared an Intangible Cultural Heritage of Austria by Unesco in 2010.

Another highlight is the Carnival of Axams, a small town some 10km from Innsbruck. In Axams different types of events will take place from 6 January, but the most special is on 27 February with the celebration of Mad Thursday: hundreds of Wampelers, legendary characters in white shirts stuffed with hay and straw (legend has it that they do this to protect themselves from the paws of bears), try to cross the streets of the town without attracting the attention of the Riders, their enemies, who will try to knock them down on their backs in a symbolic fight that represents the expected change of season. In addition to this performance, other traditional figures such as Tuxer, Flitscheler, Nadln and Buijazzln – who represent different archetypes of village inhabitants – participate, making this a vibrant and colourful experience. The show, also recognised by Unesco in 2016, starts this year at 1pm.

Fly with Iberia to Innsbruck for 11,300 Avios and to Salzburg for 16,900 Avios (return flight) and enjoy a different winter full of music and culture.