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Markus Hinterh\u00e4user\u2019s tenure as the artistic leader of the Salzburg Festival \u2014 one of the world\u2019s most important classical music events \u2014 came to an abrupt end on Thursday when the festival\u2019s board terminated his contract, effectively barring him from even overseeing this summer\u2019s festival, which he planned.<\/p>\n
Hinterh\u00e4user\u2019s tenure was supposed to run through 2031, but the festival\u2019s board cut it short. It gave him the option to continue until 2027 to ensure a smooth transition to new leadership, but Hinterh\u00e4user, 67, did not respond to that offer by a deadline of March 13. <\/p>\n
\u201cDue to irreconcilable differences of opinion, the Salzburg Festival and Artistic Director Markus Hinterh\u00e4user have decided to part ways, effective immediately,\u201d the festival\u2019s supervisory board said in a statement. It said Hinterh\u00e4user would be placed on leave through the original termination date of his contract, Sept. 30. This was in addition to an earlier decision by the board to rescind a five-year contract extension.<\/p>\n
The board said that details of the termination agreement, reached between attorneys for the board and for Hinterh\u00e4user, would remain confidential.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
The sudden termination means that the artistic leadership of the world\u2019s largest classical music festival is, for the moment, unknown. The announcement came less than four months before the 2026 festival opens. The board said that as it looks for a permanent successor, discussions were already underway with candidates for provisional artistic director.<\/p>\n
Hinterh\u00e4user\u2019s association with the festival, which was founded over a century ago in the city of Mozart\u2019s birth, is a long one. From 2007 to 2011, he programmed its concerts; he became artistic director in 2017<\/a>. In that role, he found success by encouraging artists to re-examine traditional crowd-pleasing operas<\/a>, and the festival twice extended his contract, most recently for a third term beginning this fall.<\/p>\n But Hinterh\u00e4user\u2019s standing \u2014 at the festival and within the broader world of classical music \u2014 has degraded in recent years, especially as he gained a reputation for hiring festival artists from a small pool of regulars. One of the most contentious appointments was that of the iconoclastic conductor Teodor Currentzis, who, as a beneficiary of Russian state funding<\/a>, was briefly shunned by many European theaters and concert halls after the invasion of Ukraine in 2022.<\/p>\n