Notes from the Spa: A Few Days at Kissinger Sommer

Each summer, the small German spa town of Bad Kissingen hosts Kissinger Sommer, a classical music festival that brings international artists to an otherwise quiet corner of Franconia. Jonathan Whiting caught a cross-section of this year’s varied programme – from lesser performed oratorios to symphonic mobs

Bad Kissingen is very much the picture-postcard example of a provincial medieval German spa town – the sort of place, like many spa resorts in Britain, whose cultural identity was shaped by the rise of 19th-century therapeutic tourism. Nestled in a narrow valley on the meandering Franconian Saale, its arcaded promenades, formal rose gardens and ornate pump rooms still evoke the genteel rhythms of a bygone age. But for just over four weeks each summer, the town plays host to the Kissinger Sommer festival, an international music festival that draws some of the biggest names in classical music to this otherwise quiet corner of Lower Franconia

Founded in 1986 as part of a wider cultural revitalisation effort during Germany’s postwar division, the festival has grown steadily in ambition and reputation. Today, it boasts a programme of symphonic and chamber concerts, recitals, talks and public participation events, featuring orchestras such as the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra, the Czech Philharmonic and the BBC Symphony Orchestra, with conductors and soloists drawn from the upper echelons of the international circuit...

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