| 'Is that a goat?' 'Where?' 'High on the hill.' And so began a day of trying to avoid Sound of Music references, failing miserably, of course. The fact that the hills en route to Salzburg we're not so much alive as increasingly covered in cloud unfortunately meant that we spent a rather soggy day in Mozart's birth town. Crowds of wet tourists weren't high priority on our wish-list, but we'd pinpointed a chamber concert which we managed to find just in the nick of time, 12 noon. The Romanischer Saal proved to be a tiny whitewashed crypt-like space which we crept into, joining just 20 or so other listeners. What a treat it turned out to be, an hour's recital of varying string permutations with clarinet, all by local boy Wolfgang Amadeus. Clearly talented musicians all, but the clarinettist, Ferdinand Steiner, had charisma and style in abundance. Due to our last-minute entry we missed out on being given a written programme so collected one on the way out, to find that - ha, no wonder he was good! - he'd played with the Vienna and Berlin Phils. The coach took us back to Linz, where we'd docked in the early hours, birthplace of Anton Bruckner. Happy memories of hearing his 7th Symphony in Vienna's Musikverein on our previous visit. The local myth is that when the angels are playing around they listen to Mozart, but when they're with God they choose Bruckner. From the sublime to the ridiculous, or at least vaguely cheesy, the ship provided evening entertainment by a duo from the Salzburg Mozarteum. Opera arias segued into operetta and dancing, with some surprises for certain passengers who'd (unwisely?) chosen front row seats. Then inevitably full audience participation was encouraged for a Sound of Music medley ... although there was no sign of the goat.  |  |
