Orchestra
The Mozarteumorchester Salzburg is the city’s own civic orchestra, founded in 1841 and rooted in the same musical tradition that produced Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. It performs year-round at the Mozarteum concert halls and serves as house orchestra for the annual Mozartwoche. For visitors outside the Salzburg Festival season, it is the most consistent option for live orchestral music in the city.
Founded in 1841, the Mozarteumorchester predates the modern Salzburg Festival by eight decades and has a direct institutional connection to the Stiftung Mozarteum, the foundation that manages Mozart’s legacy and organises Mozart Week. The orchestra is Salzburg’s resident civic ensemble, not a visiting body: it performs here every season, maintains its own subscription audience, and plays in the venues that belong to the city’s musical identity.
The key distinction for visitors to understand is this: the Vienna Philharmonic, which headlines many of the most prestigious Salzburg Festival concerts, is a visiting orchestra that travels to Salzburg each summer. The Mozarteumorchester is the orchestra that stays. Its repertoire centres on Mozart and the Viennese classical tradition, but extends into the broader eighteenth- and nineteenth-century canon.
The Mozartwoche in January is the moment when the Mozarteumorchester is most prominently featured: the Stiftung Mozarteum builds the entire festival around historically informed performance of Mozart, and the orchestra plays a central role in every edition. Ticket prices for Mozarteumorchester concerts are generally far more accessible than Festival prices, making this a genuine option for musically interested visitors at almost any point in the year.
Locations
Completed 1960
The Grosses Festspielhaus (Large Festival Hall) opened in 1960 as a major expansion of Salzburg's Festspielhaus complex, carved in large part from the Moenchsberg cliff face to achieve its 2,179-seat auditorium. Architect Clemens Holzmeister cut the main stage directly into the rock, creating one of the widest stages in the world at 100 meters.
Built 1910-1914
The Mozarteum Foundation is the institution that runs both of Salzburg's Mozart museums, organizes the Mozart Week festival each January, and operates the concert hall on Schwarzstrasse where major chamber and orchestral programming happens outside the Salzburg Festival.
