Munich & Salzburg

18th – 24th March 2015

£2,250  (single supplement £229)

The booking form may be downloaded here: TTM2469 Odyssey 6pp lo

Overview

Munich (or München, literally ‘home of the monks’) has a long tradition for patronising music and the arts, and when on this tour we immerse ourselves in its culture, we shall learn that over the centuries the city has drawn to its heart great composers and artists such as Lassus, Mozart and Wagner and Lenbach, Klee and Kandinsky. Munich was – and is – a melting pot for the various strands of the arts, and our time there will be spent sampling the best of what it has to offer. By contrast, Salzburg is quieter, quainter and a little bit of a backwater, but nonetheless is famous for being the birthplace of Mozart and the city in which he spent the majority of the first 25 years of his life. Apart from enjoying the old world atmosphere of Salzburg, our time there will be spent following in the footsteps of ‘the miracle which God let be born in Salzburg’.

Itinerary

Day 1

We all meet at Heathrow to take a 2 hour flight to Munich. Upon arrival, a coach will take us from the airport to the historic centre of the city, where we will view some of the main highlights including the Rathaus, the Frauenkirche and the Michaelskirche – the burial place of King Ludwig II.  In the later afternoon we will book into the 4 star Holiday Inn, conveniently located in the middle of the city. After an introductory lecture by Peter on Munich’s musical connections, we will gather for a drinks reception, which is followed by a group dinner in the Hotel’s restaurant.

Day 2

After breakfast, we will depart by coach for a tour of the Alte Pinakothek, which opened its doors in 1836 and is therefore one of the oldest art galleries in the world. Among its treasures are Dürer’s ‘Selfportrait in Fur’, Leonardo da Vinci’s ‘Madonna of the Carnation’ and Rubens’s ‘Last Judgment’. We then re-locate to the Neue Pinakothek whose focus is on European Art of the 18^th and 19^th centuries. After this, we depart by coach for the Nyphenburg Palace where an included light lunch has been arranged. The Nyphenburg Palace dates from the late 17^th century and was the main summer residence of the rulers of Bavaria of the House of Wittelsbach. After we have enjoyed a tour of the Palace, we return to the hotel via the stunning Modernist Herz-Jesu-Kirche that famously shines – as they say – like a blue gem. The evening is at leisure.

Day 3

We follow breakfast with a talk on Mozart’s opera ‘Idomeneo’ written for the Munich Carnival season of 1781, after which we depart for the Deutsches Museum and its famous musical instrument collection. On display are items ranging from the Bronze Age ‘lur’ to a DX-7 synthesizer, but – given our theme for the week – we will be able to view the excellent range of 18^th and 19^th century keyboard instruments, all housed in a single large room. A light lunch is included at the Braunauer Hotel. We then walk to view the Isar Tor, the New Synagogue, the Asam Church, and the building in Burg Strasse where Mozart composed ‘Idomeneo’. A coach will take us back to our hotel so that those going to hear Wagner’s ‘Götterdämmerung’ can change and get to the theatre in good time. En route to theatre, or just after, the coach will also be available to transfer non-theatre goers to the 3rd of the Pinakoteck galleries, or to the Lenbach Museum. The coach will be available to collect museum people afterwards and bring them back to the hotel.

Day 4

Be prepared, we have an early start today and leave the hotel at 8 am for Neuschwanstein Castle. This fairytale style building was erected between 1869 and 1892 as a retreat from the world for the reclusive King Ludwig II. However, within six weeks of his death, Neuschwanstein was opened to the public and since then, has become one of the most visited castles in all Europe. It was also intended by Ludwig to be a homage to Wagner and his operas, and the interior of Neuschwanstein contains many visual references to the composer’s music dramas. Our lecture this morning, on Wagner, will be given on the coach as we travel to the castle. After a tour of Neuschwanstein, a picnic lunch will be provided. We return to Munich via Wieskirche, a magnificent church designed in the late 1740s by Dominikus Zimmermann and now an UNESCO World Heritage Site. On our return to the hotel, there will be time for operas goers to get themselves ready for the evening performance of Mozart’s ‘Die Entführung aus dem Serail’. Otherwise, the evening is at leisure.

Day 5

Today we check out of our hotel in Munich and depart by coach for Salzburg. However, before we leave the city centre, we will have a tour of the Munich Residenz – the largest city palace in Germany and famous for its architecture, room decorations, and displays from the former royal collections. This will be followed by a light lunch. In the afternoon we travel to Salzburg via St Gilgen located 25 km east of Salzburg. The village was the home of Mozart’s grandfather, where his mother was born and where his sister Nannerl moved after her marriage. There is a very interesting little museum dedicated to the much-underrated Nannerl. After refreshments, we leave St Gilgen for the last part of the journey to Salzburg and check into our hotel. Before we meet for a group dinner, Peter will give a lecture on Mozart and his Salzburg connections.

Day 6

After breakfast we will have a lecture that explores the music that Mozart wrote for his Salzburg audiences between 1761 and 1781. Just after 10 am, we will begin our walking tour of the old city of Salzburg and make our way to the Mozart Geburtshaus at No 9 Getreidegasse, the first of the two domestic buildings associated with the composer’s life in the city. Mozart was born in this house in 1756, and the family apartment is now a museum filled with portraits of Mozart and other surviving memorabilia. When the tour is finished we will visit St Peter’s Abbey, where Joseph Haydn’s brother Michael is buried and where Mozart presented the première his Great Mass in C minor K427, in 1783. After an included light lunch in a near by restaurant, we will walk to the second Mozart house, the so-called ‘Tanzmeisterhaus’, where Mozart lived from the age of 17 until his departure for Vienna in 1781. Again, there is much to see, including one of Mozart’s pianos, as well as the famous ‘family’ portrait of the Mozarts (above). We return to the Hotel, where Peter will give a recital of music by Mozart. The evening is at leisure.

Day 7

After we have checked out of the hotel, we will either visit the Salzburg Museum of Historic Musical Instruments or see the Fortress Hohensalzburg (the Castle on the hill above Salzburg) built on the instructions of the Prince-Archbishops of Salzburg. We will enjoy an early lunch in Salzburg, and then make our way by coach to Munich Airport to catch our late afternoon flight to London. We will arrive at Heathrow in good time for people to travel home, without its being too late.

Highlights

The tour is limited to 24 passengers

All excursions, entrance fees and guided tours included

Centrally located hotels

Receptions

Lunch or dinner included on each day

Recitals given by Peter Medhurst

Morning lectures

Operas
Tickets (not inclusive) can be arranged for two opera performances in Munich:
‘Götterdämmerung’ by Wagner
‘Die Entführung aus dem Serail’ by Mozart

If you would like more information please call us on
01442 865528 or email us at info@bluethreadmedhurst.com