Haydn-Heinburg Society: Actor Fritz Karl reads at the Cultural Factory

“Christmas for all time” was the slogan for the Haydngesellschaft Hainburg team’s final event of the season. Actor Fritz Karl, a two-time Romy Award winner well known in film and television, wowed the audience with his reading at the sold-out Kulturfabrik Hainburg. The pre-Christmas lecture evening was originally scheduled to take place on 2 December, but the snow chaos made it impossible for Karl to leave Munich.

With humor and charm, the audience favorite devotes himself to texts that smileily reject the quieter time of the year. Who likes to eat vanilla crescents? Or should they properly be called vanilla crescents? How are these birthday cakes consumed? to caution? greedy? Calorie conscious? Or even secretly, even before Christmas Eve?

Whether cheerful by Joachim Ringelnatz and Heinz Ehrhardt or intellectual by Robert Gernhardt and Geert Heidenreich: Fritz Karl read texts with rich gestures and a sure sense of punchy lines. Then he also presented Daniel Glatauer’s book The Carp Controversy. The most beautiful Christmas crises. “If you don’t argue at Christmas, you’re missing a perfect opportunity,” the author says. Even if Fritz Karl presents these “best occasions for arguments” in an interesting way, there is still hope that the festival of festivals will continue well and harmoniously.

The Sonari Linz string quartet provided the wonderful musical accompaniment to this literary evening, with imaginative arrangements of international Christmas music from the Baroque period to the present.

The first concert of the Hainburg Haydn Society in 2024 will take place on February 17 at 6 pm: the “K+K Vienna” platform, conducted by its founder Kirill Kupanchenko, principal violinist of the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra, will perform at the Kulturfabrik with music. By Lanner, Strauss, Mozart, Elgar, Kreisler and others.