„Thanking you very much for the great kindness that Hochderselbe also want to take over the service on August 6 and Sunday the 7th, I will probably pack up my seven plums and run away to St. Florian where I can let out my crickets at will“, Anton Bruckner wrote to his colleague Pius Richter at the beginning of August 1881 to divide up the organ duties at the Vienna Court Chapel. Once again, Bruckner shows himself to be a man with a sense of humor that many would not expect. His passion for his native Upper Austria, in this case especially for his home port of St. Florian, where he would find his eternal rest in such a striking and planned manner, is evident in his elopement.
Even more remarkable is the expression that he can „let out his crickets at will“ there. He is certain that he can give free rein to his craziness and idiosyncrasies there and probably means this not only in terms of his quirkiness as a person, but above all in that he finds the ideal space to create his incomparable work. The time he had off work was the time to work on his original work. Which he only finds in Vienna in the evenings after work. „You have to have a home in order not to need it,“ wrote Jean Amery much later for completely different reasons. Bruckner knew where he belonged, he heard himself, and yet his work leads far beyond the horizon of his homeland into the vastness of the world.
We, Upper Austrians, know how to celebrate festivals. The writer Karl-Markus Gauss cites the Counter-Reformation and its return in the form of an excessive folk festival culture as the root of our festival culture, which still manifests itself today in more than 80 festivals. In the first Upper Austrian KulturExpo on the occasion of the 200th birthday of the genius loci, we approached the man Bruckner and his work in an incredibly diverse way. An approach that springs from the presence of one of the most intense cultural landscapes in Europe, its creative people.
Now it’s here, the 200th birthday. On September 4, we will be celebrating for 24 hours all over the country: the Bruckner Orchestra Linz and Markus Poschner in St. Florian, Franz Welser-Möst and the Cleveland Orchestra in Ansfelden. In Linz, Steyr, Kronstorf, Windhaag bei Freistadt, Wilhering, Kirchdorf an der Krems and Vöcklabruck, the present will be played, danced, sung, shown, heard and experienced. Bruckner moves us, connects us, inspires us. The Bruckner year is not over, it just culminates on this special day, so that it doesn’t just last until December 31. We will emerge from this year as changed people with many new experiences of togetherness and openness, as only art can do. Congratulations not only to Anton Bruckner, but to all of us!
