For anything classical in Vienna

[SurprisedByBeauty]

http://konzerthaus.at/programm/000000e9-000c89a6


http://konzerthaus.at/programm/000000e9-000e2374


http://konzerthaus.at/programm/001595c3
http://konzerthaus.at/programm/001595c7


http://konzerthaus.at/programm/000000e9-000e7d3b


http://konzerthaus.at/kh/d/0201_deta...000e9-000cd386


http://konzerthaus.at/kh/d/0201_deta...000e9-000cd39d

[jochanaan]

I wish I could go to Vienna!  But it takes finances...

[The new erato]

I will be there in July! Taking a 8 day Donau Cruise Vienna - Melk - Budapest - Vienna on this:



Planning to find time for a concert.

[jlaurson]

I will be there in July! Taking a 8 day Donau Cruise Vienna - Melk - Budapest - Vienna on this:



Planning to find time for a concert.

Unfortunately July isn't a good time in Vienna for concerts... Season ends pretty much end of June... and then SILENCE and tourist concerts. :-( You must make your way up to Salzburg or to one of the many other festivals, if you want to hear quality stuff around that time, I'm afraid.

[Wanderer]

I don't want to jinx it, but I may be there in March (first time since 1996). I'll certainly make sure to attend a concert or two.

I will be there in July! Taking a 8 day Donau Cruise Vienna - Melk - Budapest - Vienna on this:

Sounds nice! Make sure to visit the cathedral in Esztergom.

[EigenUser]

Sounds nice! Make sure to visit the cathedral in Esztergom.

...and the Bartok museum (his old house) in Budapest!

[paulsp]

Unfortunately July isn't a good time in Vienna for concerts... Season ends pretty much end of June... and then SILENCE and tourist concerts. :-( You must make your way up to Salzburg or to one of the many other festivals, if you want to hear quality stuff around that time, I'm afraid.

Totally agree, "Classical" concerts in Vienna during July/August are put on purely for the non discerning tourist and are generallyof a fairly low standard, certainly nothing like you would get during the rest of the year.    The same applies to Prague and Budapest from my experience.

[jlaurson]

ARTS & LETTERS 4/01/2015
The Vienna Symphony's Path Out Of The Shadow

[jochanaan]

ARTS & LETTERS 4/01/2015
The Vienna Symphony's Path Out Of The Shadow

It's no shame to have labored in the shadow of the Vienna Philharmonic.  The Vienna Symphony Orchestra has a long series of recordings to its credit, and while they are not always the most distinguished recordings, there are some wonderful ones.  I have their Brahms cycle from (I believe) the 1960s or early '70s with Wolfgang Sawallisch leading; splendid playing!  (But Sawallisch always drew splendid playing from any orchestra I've heard him lead on records. )

[jlaurson]

It's no shame to have labored in the shadow of the Vienna Philharmonic.  The Vienna Symphony Orchestra has a long series of recordings to its credit, and while they are not always the most distinguished recordings, there are some wonderful ones.  I have their Brahms cycle from (I believe) the 1960s or early '70s with Wolfgang Sawallisch leading; splendid playing!  (But Sawallisch always drew splendid playing from any orchestra I've heard him lead on records. )

Well, Sawallisch had them at their good time... it's post-Giulini that they went into the darkness.

[jlaurson]

Ionarts-at-Large: A Korean-Zukerman Evening of Weirdness at the Musikverein

http://ionarts.blogspot.com/2015/04/ionarts-at-large-korean-zukerman.html

It was a strange, strange concert when the Korean Chamber Orchestra
(formerly known as the Seoul Baroque Ensemble) took the stage at Vienna's
Musikverein for their hyperbolically titled "50th Anniversary World Tour" – a
world consisting of Vienna ("Is there anything else that matters?", a true
Viennese might incredulously ask), London, Berlin, Moscow and Seoul.

From the get-go of the Mendelssohn Symphony for Strings No.10, performed
under the patronizing glares of Pinchas Zukerman (conductor and soloist of
the World Tour, although participating only on two stops), there was a weird
atmosphere about the place, even as the performance turned out fairly normal:
light, detailed, reasonably accurate, bloodless and totally matter of fact. The
event got a further push towards the Twilight Zone when Pinchas Zukerman's
wife, nominal cellist Amanda Forsyth, gallivanted onto the stage in a dress that
took its cue from an exploded candy factory. Husband and wife (perish the
thought of nepotism: Zukerman would never appear with her at his side if he
didn't think she was absolutely one of the world's best cellists... he's said so
himself, in a pleasant chat we once had on the topic) then gave a rendition of
the Vivaldi Concerto for Violin and Cello RV547 that was...

[jochanaan]

Well, Sawallisch had them at their good time... it's post-Giulini that they went into the darkness.

An excellent point..  As I've said elsewhere, music does not develop in isolation.

[jlaurson]

Ionarts-at-Large: Trio Wanderer in Romantic Redemption

http://ionarts.blogspot.com/2015/04/ionarts-at-large-trio-wanderer-in.html

The Trio Wanderer is one of the ARD International Music Competition Prize Winner alumni
that make that competition's name in the chamber music field quite so prestigious. Their
recordings (Best of 2009 here, Best of 2012 here, Messiaen) are of library-building quality,
rivaled only by the Beaux Arts Trio and the Florestan Trio. In short: worth a trip to the Musik-
verein's Brahms-Saal even if it isn't my favorite chamber venue in Vienna. (Shaped like a coffin
and just a little less lively.) Snark aside, it's not that bad a place to hear Haydn, Schumann,
and Tchaikovsky. Nor is it surprising to hear such an ultra-conventional program there, down
to the abuse of glorious Haydn as the warm-up piece. (Complauding™*!)

And the Haydn Trio No.43 in C (the Vienna venues every only list Haydn by the incredibly
useless Hoboken numbers, as if "Hoboken XV/27" were particularly meaningful to everyone
but a musicologist with not much of a social life) did indeed sound like a warm-up, sadly. It
came and went—...

[jlaurson]

Ionarts-at-Large: The Takács Quartet in Vienna

http://ionarts.blogspot.com/2015/04/ionarts-at-large-takacs-quartet-in.html

The heart of chamber music of Vienna beats in the Mozart-Saal. But the
offerings at the Brahms-Saal of the venerable, more famous Musikverein
can be tempting, too... and if and when the Takács Quartet calls whence,
the resident-ionarts unit will drop whatever he is doing and head over to
hear one of our longest standing favorites. Even in an utterly conservative
program such as they presented at the Musikverein on Tuesday, February
10th: Schubert, Schubert, Beethoven. And the Beethoven "Razumovsky
1" at that... not that there is anything wrong with that. But it's not the
modern Beethoven à la op.135 which might have been the programmatically
redeeming element severed very severely at the end.

The Brahms-Saal, if you haven't been, looks and feels something like what
an Egyptian sarcophagus must, from the inside, and with a similar average
age of its contents. Or imagine a Russian oligarch with more money than
sense who got to re-design Wigmore Hall after watching a 70s Hercules film:
Doric columns in rusty red and emerald green stone tiles and gild plated
carvings, cherubs, and Greek maidens (as pillars) everywhere. If it wasn't
hallowed traditional grounds, people would call for the wrecking ball.

The Schubert Quartettsatz...

[jlaurson]

Ionarts-at-Large: End-of-the-World-Music in Vienna

http://ionarts.blogspot.com/2015/05/ionarts-at-large-end-of-world-music-in_9.html

Within a few days, the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra and the Bavarian State Orchestra
(the opera's orchestra) pitched their tents at the Musikverein in Vienna. I caught the second
of those two concerts, with the Opera's orchestra under their music director Kirill Petrenko,
because I had to! It featured Berlioz' Symphonie fantastique, but that wasn't the reason. It
opened with Ravel's La Valse (Poème chorégraphique pour Orchestre), but that wasn't the
reason either. But in the middle lured a tremendous work: Gesangsszene to words from
"Sodom and Gomorrha" by Jean Giraudoux for Baritone and Orchestra by Karl Amadeus
Hartmann. Not only that, but with the best possible baritone in that repertoire, too: namely
Christian Gerhaher. That's unmissable in my book – and everything else is mere bonus...