In Search of Mozart: up close and personal

This morning we started this week-long conference in Salzburg with a viewing of the docu-drama of In Search of Mozart, a film full of intense, accurate story telling and LOTS of close ups and tight head shots of musicians, directors, conductors, composers and anyone who is an expert on Mozart's life and music. It made for intense story-telling but I found it a bit too uniformly full of close-ups and shallow depth of field shots that refused to resolve in a rack focus. Maybe I'm being a film snob but on the wide screen all those tight shots made my eyes want to fall out. But we learned a lot of Mozart's life and exactly how human he was.

Breakfast and lunches are included in this week and both were amazing.

The entire afternoon was a session on the first movement of String Quartet K. 575. Really good. I was on 2nd violin and was happy not to have to face walls of 16ths and triplets right off the hop.

Got to review Innsbruck as Jan 8th was a huge whirlwind: Bought a 24 hr Innsbruck Card first thing in the morning (29E), and immediately jumped on the Innsbrucker Nortketter car up the mountain and hiked through alpine trails to an Alm accessible in winter. Not much snow, lots of green grass. Then continued up the mountain to the ski runs at the top where the experts were doing big mountain runs. There was a winter hiking trail accessible to normal non-skiers so I had to summit the nearest snow-covered thing - in my Doc Martens. If a nine-year-old Austian girl and her dad could do it in ordinary boots, so could I! But cold and windy!

Mountain summit above Innsbruck, Austria

Having been on a mountain, I then hit up the Alpine Club Mountain display in the Imperial Palace, then ran upstairs to the actual Imperial Palace.

Castle Ambras' Spanish Hall - NOT Maria Theresia's Hall

Maria Theresia decorated her great hall differently from her predecessor male Kaisers who had their ancestors on the walls: she had all her children, their spouses, and their children presented to show how powerful she was by being able to create her decendants: such a smart and powerful woman.

Ran out of the Hapsburg family home just in time to catch a sightseer bus to Castle Ambras, a medieval castle renovated in part during the renaissance by one of those Hapsburgs. Some Medici wives were also involved there somewhere. Go read a history book for more info. I just took lotsa pictures and ran around. Then it got dark and once again I had to find my way down a hill without a headlamp. This time there were more people around to ask for directions. Instead of just sheep.

Castle Ambras Courtyard

That was my Saturday and that's why I wasn't performing at the Grant and Wilton coffee house in Winnipeg.