In 1997, Salzburg-born Gustav Kuhn, who is a disciple of the great Karajan, created his own festival, the Tyrol Festival Erl, in the small town of Erl located between Kufstein and Rosenheim. The 25-day long festival has been running continuously at the Passionsspielhaus in Erl every July since 1998. A new 2-week long Winter Festival took place for the first time in December 2012 at the recently built Festspielhaus. The Tyrol Festival Erl, which has been run as an LLC since 2005, has its own orchestra, a choir academy and design studio, all of which will find a new home at the Festspielhaus. Festival president is Dr. Hans Peter Haselsteiner, general manager Gustav Kuhn.

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With the Tyrol Festival Erl, Gustav Kuhn is creating musical art that is free of commercial influences and pressure: great opera and concert literature from the 19th century, contemporary compositions, jazz and folk music, and everything that sheds light on and/or critically examines these genres. It is Mr. Kuhn’s philosophy that helped making the Tyrol Festival Erl a financially successful and artistically acclaimed event, and a fixture in Tyrol’s cultural landscape. The Summer Festival spotlights Wagner and Strauss, as well as the classical and romantic concert repertoire; the Winter Festival’s focus is on Mozart, Bach, bel-canto and the Italian repertoire. With an annual attendance of over 20,000 visitors every year, the Summer Festival is of substantial economic importance to the entire region.

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The German daily Frankfurter Rundschau described the Tyrolean Festival Erl as a "balancing act of highly ambitious projects". This balancing act is a result of Gustav Kuhn’s effort to create meaningfulness in all his endeavors: "Culture is multi-layered and complex. We therefore try to do more than just put on another music event. We want to be a festival of controversy that caters to a multitude of tastes.”

 

www.tiroler-festspiele.at