Summer is approaching and with it the festival season at Lake Constance: the Wiener Symphoniker take up their summer residence in Bregenz and invite you to a multifaceted festival programme. From rousing orchestral fullness to intimate chamber music moments, the programme spans a wide musical spectrum.

Carl Maria von Weber's Der Freischütz is the highlight of the Bregenz Festival, set against a spectacular backdrop of waves lapping the lake. For the 79th time, the Vienna Symphony Orchestra accompanies the performance on the lake as Orchestra in Residence and emphasises the visually stunning production. As a musical prelude to their residency, ensembles of the Wiener Symphoniker transform the city centre of Bregenz into a sonorous walking concert during the Day of the Wiener Symphoniker.

Musical highlights can also be discovered away from the lake stage: for example, George Enescu's rarely performed opera Œdipe, directed by Andreas Kriegenburg, or the three orchestra concerts with renowned conductors such as Elim Chan and Jukka-Pekka Saraste. The concert under the direction of chief conductor Petr Popelka with pianist Mao Fujita is the glittering finale. Sergei Rachmaninov's Third Piano Concerto and Richard Strauss' Also sprach Zarathustra combine the highest virtuosity and emotional depth with symphonic poetry.

The chamber concerts in the Seestudio, which are organised under the motto ‘Ganz persönlich’ (‘Very personal’), are also a firm fixture of the Bregenz Festival Summer. The programme ranges from traditional sound culture with the characteristic sound of the Viennese horn and the horn players of the Wiener Symphoniker to the Symphonisches Schrammelquintett Wien, which brings a musical form of expression to the stage with the Viennese Lied, which is deeply rooted in the city's cultural identity. The Glière Quartet rounds off the programme in a classical and elegant manner, combining classical clarity and impressionistic variety of sound with Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy's String Quartet in A minor and Maurice Ravel's String Quartet in F major.