Apple Music Classical to Partner with the Salzburg Festival

The festival's archive recordings will be made available on the app, with some remastered in Spatial Audio

Apple Music Classical recently announced that it will partner with Austria's Salzburg Festival to bring a wealth of the festival's recordings to the platform. These will include exclusive recordings from each edition of the festival as well as curated playlists.

Of particular interest are the Spatial Audio remasterings of past performances — for instance, a recording of the 2009 recital given by Martha Argerich and Nelson Freire.

"The Salzburg Festival with its more than 100 year history is very pleased to be able to present its unique line up of incredible productions, opera, concerts, recitals and chamber music on the newly created Apple Music Classical," the festival wrote in a statement.

Apple Music Classical, which launched in March 2023, contains a range of curated playlists, composer biographies, discussion guides for certain pieces, and thousands of exclusive albums — as well as collaborations with artists such as Yo-Yo Ma and Hilary Hahn.

The app's primary point of difference is that its metadata is tailored explicitly to classical music — making it easier to browse and search for different performances of the same work. The app's catalog has more than 50 million individual data points so that users can peruse its contents in rich detail.

Apple Music Classical partners with a number of ensembles and organizations to offer exclusive content, including the Berlin Philharmonic, the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, the London Symphony Orchestra, and the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra.