Pure source is a riddle. Poems even
May hardly show the solutions. For as
You started, you will continue,
Whatever the workings of discipline
Or necessity; for most is
Achieved by birth
And the ray of light
That meets the new-born infant.*

Let’s be romantic and start this writing with one of world’s greatest Romantics - Hölderlin! His description of the river Rhine is a perfect introduction to this year’s newsletters, for although a metaphor for artist’s life, we can just as well use it to depict our festival. From the enigmatic force of inspiration through a roaring start, we shall follow its course, pure and innocent, in the open, and watch it gain power and breadth enough to create landscapes in which productive energy can flourish.

Perfect, isn’t it?

But, there’s another reason for Hölderlin to appear in these lines. The verses cited above were namely also cited by Nicolas Altstaedt in one of his interviews**. He used them to illustrate his need of being pure to play music. “Art always needs to be created anew, to be born and experienced again and again,” he explained.

So, welcome to Birth. Of Festival Maribor 2017. Of Art. Of Music. Of Love!

Opening Concert: Birth
Haydn Filharmonie
Nicolas Altstaedt, Conductor, Solo Cello,
Sunday, 3 September 2017, 7.30 pm, Union Hall, Maribor



*Friedrich Hölderlin (Der Rhein, 1801/1802, translated by Michael Hamburger)
**Der Standard, 2016, L. Tosic