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Press Articles
Financial Times, 28/29 June 2008
Where baroque meets Bacchus
...When the travel writer Patrick Leigh Fermor passed this way in 1934 on his epic walk to Constantinople, he was delighted by the way Melk’s baroque embraces the sacred and profane alike with characteristic light-heartedness. Fermor was here in winter; I visited in the autumn, with a small band of well-heeled and well-connected cultural pilgrims. By nature I’m an independent traveller; pick the right group, though, and your travelling companions can themselves be an education. So it was on this occasion. It was perhaps characteristic of the Fine Art Travel groups that one of our number knew Fermor. Some were fans of the Italian baroque following its subsequent journey north of the Alps; some were seeing a country new to them. Others had more complex relations with Austria...
...We retreated each night instead to the fin de siècle plush of Vienna’s Hotel Bristol, a grand hotel with a roll-call of famous guests that runs from Caruso to Karajan and the Duke of Windsor. Yet something of the spirit of Fermor’s journey pervaded the tour. Like him, we were accorded privileged insights into Austria’s cultural riches, from private viewings to an evening at the Staatsoper in the company of a conductor, who dissected the strengths and weaknesses of the performance – of Richard Strauss’s Arabella – as we nibbled an elegant supper...