Ambitious projectA. Lange & Söhne becomes official sponsor of the Salzburg Whitsun Festival
As official sponsor of the Salzburg Whitsun Festival, the exclusive watch brand A. Lange & Söhne is to help realise an ambitious project over the next three years. The festival, which will be conducted by Riccardo Muti, has set itself the task of performing centuries-old forgotten masterpieces for the first time.
Muti, who is also spiritus rector of the Whitsun Festival, rediscovered the forgotten scores – among them Domenico Cimarosa’s opera “Il ritorno di Don Calandrino” and Alessandro Scarlatti’s “Oratorio a quattro voci” – in his home city of Naples. During a visit to the traditional Saxon manufactory accompanied by the festival’s president Helga Rabl-Stadler on 19 February, he was deeply impressed by the complex work carried out by the watchmaker: “I am delighted not only because the Salzburg Whitsun Festival has gained a partner like A. Lange & Söhne that supports this ambitious project in such a committed way and shares our values. I am also impressed by the way in which the company knows how to inject new life into craft traditions.”
For Lange CEO Fabian Krone, the partnership with the Salzburg Whitsun Festival is a basic pillar of the exclusive watchmaker’s cultural sponsorship strategy: “We were enthusiastic about this project from the very beginning. For we see a parallel with our own history in terms of reviving forgotten masterpieces. When the A. Lange & Söhne brand was relaunched in 1990, our task was to bring to life a tradition that had been condemned for decades, take up inspired designs from the past that had vanished into oblivion and reinterpret them to meet contemporary demands.”
A. Lange & Söhne is also opting for top quality with its involvement in sponsoring: apart from the Salzburg Whitsun Festival, Lange sponsors the international singing competition focussed on Italian operas called “Competizione dell’Opera”, whose final will be held in the Dresden Semperoper in September 2007, as well as the Dresden State Art Collections. These include the “Historic Green Vault”, which was reopened recently, the “Old Masters Picture Gallery” and the “Mathematisch-Physikalischer Salon”, whose collection also houses historical Lange pocket watches.