When a country has as many of them as Austria, honouring great composers can become routine. But in special cases, such as Mozart in 2006 or this year’s 200th anniversary of the death of Joseph Haydn, even the Austrians pull out all the stops.
Few have been identified as closely with one place – and patron – as Haydn. The composer spent much of his life in Eisenstadt, a small town about an hour south of Vienna, where he worked for the aristocratic and immensely rich Esterhazy family. Schloss Esterhazy, the family’s prime castle, still towers over the town of otherwise undramatic baroque buildings made of sandy local stone.
