The 2013 Vienna Philharmonic Summer Night Concert

Every year, as the days grow longer, Austria gets ready for one of the classical calendar’s highlights: the Vienna Philharmonic’s Summer Night Concert. This event, inaugurated in 2004, brings the prestigious ensemble together with some of the world’s most illustrious soloists—in front of an audience that regularly numbers more than 100,000—in the gardens of Vienna’s world-famous Schönbrunn Palace, a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

In 2013, the legendary American conductor Lorin Maazel led the Summer Night Concert in a program dedicated to Verdi and Wagner. It was no accident that Maazel was chosen to do the honors, as he was the first American to conduct at the storied Bayreuth Festival, the highest honor for a Wagnerian. Aged 83 but as dynamic as ever, Maazel leads the esteemed ensemble in some of the most treasured works of Italian and German opera, from Aida's Triumphal March and the overture of La forza del destino to the timeless Preludes from Tristan und Isolde and Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg.

Photo © Richard Schuster