“I hope your health wins. I think you should do more exercise on foot.” This tip can be found in any fitness guide or pop-up in your fitness app – 10,000 steps a day! – But it comes from none other than Ludwig van Beethoven. A transcript of a letter the composer wrote to a friend from Baden in September 1824. He, Beethoven reported, was still taking advantage of “the already shorter days here in the mountains, where one would like to fortify oneself by walking and enjoying the open air and the beautiful surroundings before the forthcoming hardships in the city”. Beethoven took exercise on foot – and how! He was “a perfect walker”. He loved “hour-long walks, especially through wild and romantic areas”, reported a witness who walked with him through the Helenental valley. Another witness saw how Beethoven took off his tailcoat, hung it on his walking stick and walked bare-armed along the narrow promenade, passing finely dressed gentlemen. He not only swung the cane but also made the most exuberant speeches.

This walking stick can be found today in the collections of the Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde in Wien. What could be more tempting than to pick it up and take it for a walk? The Musikverein is doing just that in 2026. With its “Beethoven’s Walking Stick” festival, it invites you to set off on a journey to your heart’s content, to roam wild areas, to explore new spaces, to boldly set off, to let yourself drift with relish or even to live through a drifting experience in which a walking stick can only provide symbolic support.

Once again, it is an object from the rich collections of the Musikverein that sets the flow of ideas in motion. To be historically correct, we do not know whether it was precisely this walking stick on which Beethoven dangled his tailcoat on the promenade in Baden. Several canes are said to have been helpful to the briskly walking Beethoven. The impeccably documented course of history distinguishes the walking stick in Musikverein’s collection: this walking stick was demonstrably in Beethoven’s hand. In 1827, a few weeks after his death, it came under the hammer at the auction of his estate. Anna von Gleichenstein, the sister of Therese Malfatti, to whom Beethoven once felt so strongly attracted that his thoughts even wandered towards marriage, won the bid. The precious walking aid moved on and ended up in the archives of the Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde in Wien in 1906. Alongside valuable documents of his work – autographs, sketches, performance material corrected by his hand – it is an authentic object that tells the story of Beethoven’s life. But wait! You can’t separate one from the other.
Regarding the walking sticks, we know that Beethoven often found ideas for his work while walking. Stubborn sitting leads to sensory numbness, “when we walk”, says Thomas Bernhard, “the movement of the mind comes with the movement of the body”. This is also one of the many appealing aspects explored in this festival.

Just think of Gustav Mahler, the man hungry for exercise! He stormed up peaks, swam in ice-cold lakes, grabbed his oars and rode his bike. He then sat in his composer’s cottage on Lake Attersee and listened to the movement in the music. “Pan awakens. Summer marches in” was his idea for the first movement of the Third Symphony, which is just as prominently placed at the Musikverein Festival (Vienna Philharmonic / Andris Nelsons) as the Ninth, which opens the festival (Vienna Philharmonic / Sir Simon Rattle). Walking, striding, marching – in the Ninth, the last symphony Mahler completed, the music’s gait is first formed from an irritating beginning: the first bars sound fumbling, halting – in them, Leonard Bernstein said, the irregular heartbeat of the already ill Gustav Mahler is reflected. But be that as it may: the walking, step by step, is like the pulse, beat by beat, a motif of all music.

Mahler’s last symphony is complemented in the “echo” of the opening concert by the previous work by Luigi Nono, “Hay que laminar soñando”. A saying Nono found on the wall of a monastery in Toledo inspired – in German: “Wanderer, there are no paths, you have to wander.” In this sense, the festival’s accompanying programs also set many things in motion – further “Nachklänge”, curated by Marino Formenti, or, in a pleasurably brisk manner, on the Musikvereinplatz, where Mauricio Kagel will be pedalling: “Eine Brise – Flüchtige Aktion für 111 Radfahrer”. There will also be unusual movement in the Großer Musikvereinssaal when Haydn’s “Military Symphony” is played (Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie Bremen / Paavo Järvi) – what happens there and how is not yet revealed here. Haydn celebrated his most tremendous success with it in London; the journey was worthwhile for the old master. In Rome, however, the young Berlioz was bored and preferred to spend his time in Abruzzo. “Harold en Italie” tells of this – to be heard at the festival with violist Antoine Tamestit – but what are the exotic forays in Byron’s footsteps compared to the nightmare journey of the “Symphonie fantastique”? The Vienna Symphony Orchestra will perform it at the festival and will also stroll through Paris with George Gershwin (“An American in Paris”). Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy takes us to Scotland, Handel (Bach Consort) to Italy, Tchaikovsky (“Souvenir de Florence”, Vienna-Berlin Chamber Orchestra) and Franz Liszt. The latter’s “Dante Symphony” (Vienna Academy Orchestra) traverses hellish realms in a frenzy of sound, while the devil makes a treacherously discreet appearance in Stravinsky’s “L’Histoire du Soldat”. Petr Popelka presents this work with members of the Vienna Symphony Orchestra. Life journeys that lead into the abyss forced life paths – these are also a theme in this festival, reflected in works written in exile, including Korngold’s Violin Concerto (London Symphony Orchestra / Vilde Frang) and Bartók’s Viola Concerto (Vienna Symphony Orchestra / Antoine Tamestit).

“Now onwards, only onwards, my faithful wandering staff”: “Winterreise” is a must at this festival, Schubert’s journey into the deepest depths of the soul, sung by Andrè Schuen. A new work by Georg Friedrich Haas, to be heard as an Austrian premiere with the Ensemble Kontrapunkte, takes up the theme: “onwards and onwards and onwards …”. “Wege und Wagnis” is the name of the Black Page Orchestra’s festival program; students from the mdw will be singing “Am frisch geschnitten Wanderstab” (On the Freshly Cut Walking Stick); Markus Meyer will be reading Robert Walser’s “Der Spaziergang” (The Walk); Max Müller will be roaming through old Austrian atmospheric realms in “Sommerfrische” (Summer Retreat); Michael Köhlmeier will be telling stories about “Wanderers and Vagabonds”. Allegretto’s “Around the world in eighty days”, Sebastian and the Tontelefon, take a cheeky stroll in pursuit of a clever insight: “He who sows crescendo will reap forte”. Holla!

With a program like this, it could hardly be possible without Beethoven, the storm-tested composer!

The owner of this precious object will turn up at this or that fork in the road. “Beethoven’s Walking Stick”, the Musikverein Festival 2026, will, of course, also feature the “Pastoral” (Staatskapelle Berlin / Christian Thielemann), as well as the Second Symphony (Berliner Philharmoniker / Kirill Petrenko) and the late String Quartet op. 132 (Juilliard String Quartet). But what music was going through Beethoven’s mind when he set off from Baden – further and finally so far that he emerged in the evening in Wiener Neustadt, 30 kilometres away? Exhausted and worn out, he wandered through the town – he was taken for a tramp, arrested and not believed in his assurances that he was Beethoven until the town’s music director was rung out at night. And he testified: This is Beethoven! It is unknown whether the wild wanderer had his walking stick.