Greetings from Music City
With all due respect to Nashville, Austin or any other place that calls itself Music City, there is only one greatest Music City in the world and that is Vienna.
My wife and I decided to visit Vienna immediately before I would go on solo to the Munich show, so we could see the once in a lifetime 200th year anniversary performance of Beethoven's 9th Symphony (conducted by Ricardo Muti) at the Musikverein. More on that shortly.
Suffice it to say that Vienna is a stunning city. It has more magnificent grand 19th century buildings then I can recall in any city from my many travels throughout the world. Of course, this was greatly facilitated by the fact that the single family ruled the throne for 600 years (Hapsburgs; ~1500’s to 1918). This allowed them to build essentially whatever the hell they wanted unimpeded, without worrying whether another administration in four year’s time would shut things down or change their overall plan for the city’s design. I don't know how they do it but every building, like the entire city, is immaculate and clean. You could eat off the subway station platforms, they’re so clean! I don't know if they have a secret cleaning crew that scrubs each building stone with formula 409 in the middle of the night, but however they do it, it's damn impressive. It also didn’t hurt that they managed to do this due to 600 years of relative peace throughout their empire as the matriarch, Maria Theresa, was a baby factory, churning out 16 kids (9 daughters) most all of whom were exported like cheese to marry other European rulers. Smart, although you have to wonder what she told her daughters when they turned 15. "Sorry Maria (seems every woman was named Maria) but you have to wed that ugly SOB from (pick a country) for us to continue to prosper. Have fun and send us a postcard every once in a while"....
We began our Viennese musicfest at the State Opera where we were treated to a superb performance of Donizetti’s L’Elixer D’Amore (Elixer of Love) featuring a rising start in the Opera world, Spanish tenor Xabier Anduaga, age 29. I’ve been to many operas but never have I seen an audience go nuts to the point that after his famous aria ‘Una Furtiva Lagrima” in act 2, they relentlessly called out for an encore, which he honored. Encores for operatic arias are often frowned upon and rare. Some conductors refused to do them (e.g. Karajan) because they thought it interrupted the flow of the performance. Thus, what we heard was quite rare. (It was equally rare to watch an opera where nobody dies!) Here’s is a YouTube video of that aria from Anduaga’s debut appearance at the Metropolitan Opera in 2023. Wowza.
Everybody knows the names of the great opera singers of the past. But it is the new stars like sopranos Nadine Sierra and tenors like Anduaga that are the future of opera. Highly recommended to hear if they perform near you. This is vocal art at its highest level. Their appearances are easily found on their web sites. Both are booked world-wide for at least 2 years in advance.
Next up was a beautiful chamber performance by one of the many unknown orchestras of Vienna (there’s the Kaiser orchestra, the Brahms Orchestra, the Mozart orchestra, and the Mahler orchestra among these). Not a surprise as the kids in Vienna all play instruments well by age 10. The performance by the 7 member group we saw was of classic centuries old favorites, but it was the location that surprised me. Anybody recognize this guy?
Theodor Billroth is a name that every medical student knows because of the abdominal surgery techniques he pioneered such as the partial gastrectomy and gastrojejunostomy that are still used today. He was also president of the Vienna Medical Society in the late 1800s, and the lecture hall where we heard the concert was named in his honor because he was also an exceptional musician! It was a beautiful setting to hear the hits of the day by Mozart, Brahms and of course Strauss.
Before I share my experience at the Musikverein, I’ll share a tale of woe.
I knew it would be very difficult to obtain tickets for the performance that I wanted to see as this was part of a subscription series long sold out. I therefore reached out to independent ticket brokers in Vienna and all but one refused to help me because they said tickets were impossible to get. In September of 2023 I therefore wired money to a broker who said that he could not guarantee specific seats until it was closer to performance time. Even though they had an office right across from the state opera, they stopped answering e-mail and phones in January of 2024. Fortunately I was able to get seats through my hotel concierge a week before my arrival. In checking the Internet I could see I was one of several dozen folks who were scammed by the agency I sent money to. At the very least, I thought I should report him to the local police. They told me there were several reports already filed, but they spent 30 minutes taking information from me including confirmation of bank wiring instructions and receipt, and they proceded to file a report in great detail. I could not believe the effort they put into this. They treated it as if it was the Brinks robbery. I told them that in New York I would have been waved out of the police station in the first three seconds, as it is well known that shoplifters and murderers are no longer prosecuted or brought to justice there. They laughed. I then went around the corner and bought them a box of chocolate which they appreciated. It is no wonder that Travel and Leisure magazine called Vienna the most livable city in the world for 5 out of the past 6 years.
I also want to give a shout out to Goran (WBF’s Golum) who telephoned a friend in Vienna and asked her to stand in line for returned tickets that were sold to the public on the morning of April 29th. She managed to secure some for me but they were standing room only or seats in back of the organ, which is not something I aspired to so I ended up giving them away. The orchestra does this intentionally so folks that cannot afford ordinary tickets are not deprived of culture. The standing room seats were €5 each and the seats in the organ balcony were €15. I'm not going to tell you what I paid for seats in the partierre, but I paid more than for some audio cables that I own!
Now, on to the performance. The first thing that crossed my mind that night was that I finally understood why Dave Wilson considered hearing music in the Musikverein a life changing experience. It is well known that he designed and voiced the latest midrange driver of his speakers to help him reproduce what he considered a reference sound based on what he heard at Musikverein. Now I understand why. It would be foolish to try to state what others have said repeatedly. In the classic survey of the famed acoustician Leo Baranek, the sound of the Musikverein Is consistently rated the number one Music Hall in the world. I could describe the acoustics in great detail and depth, but why bother? If you are interested, here is an article that describes the sound of the hall far more eloquently than I could ever hope to do.
fromthesoundup.tumblr.com/post/132668581433
To be continued
