musikverein – Page 2 – Likely Impossibilities

Ich kann nicht sitzen: Standing Room at the Musikverein and Philharmoniker

September 26, 2010 1 Comment

Vienna’s Musikverein is famous for its golden-ness, its acoustics, and one of its home orchestras, the sexist bastards known as the Wiener Philharmoniker. Indeed, the place sure is shiny and sounds pretty. The Wiener Symphoniker, ORF RSO Wien, Tonkünstler-Orchester Niederösterreich, and lots of touring orchestras play there too, as well as many recitalists and chamber music groups.

The Musikverein, located just south of the Ring off Karlsplatz, is an unmissable stop on the tourist trail, but is hardly a model of institutional innovation. Individual programs can be good, but tend towards the conservative. The season as a whole lacks variety (something we will look at more shortly in my Duplicate Programming Watch), there are few reduced-price ticket programs, and their website is a bit on the primitive side (though it nicely identifies the encores performed at past concerts). However, if you’re in Vienna and haven’t seen and heard it, you really have to go.

Their standing room isn’t the best and sometimes resembles a contact sport, but it gets the job done, after a fashion. Also, if you were thinking of going to the New Year’s Concert, you should probably forget about it. I can’t help you with that, anyways.

1. Basics
The Musikverein has two main spaces: the Großer Saal (big hall) and Brahms-Saal (a recital hall). The Brahms-Saal doesn’t have standing room, but you can get restricted-view seats for around 5 Euros. The Großer Saal is where you will hear orchestras and a few bigger-deal recitals and chamber groups. Both are rectangular “shoebox” theaters with one balcony; the standing room in the Großer Saal is located in the back of the ground level, under the balcony.

Tickets are bought in advance on the Musikverein website or at the ticket office, located on the north side of the building (look for signs for the Konzertkassa). They go on sale at the same time seats do (two months minus one week before the concert) and cost 6 Euros. You can buy as many as you want. They are usually easy to get even the day of the concert with the exception of Wiener Philharmoniker concerts, which often sell out.

2. Wiener Philharmoniker standing room tickets
Standing tickets for many Philharmoniker concerts at the Musikverein are sold by the Philharmoniker directly. You can see the orchestra’s schedule here. The tickets for concerts in the first two categories, “Abonnementkonzerte” and “Soiréen”, are sold at the Philharmoniker’s ticket office according to their (totally different) policies. The Philharmoniker’s office is a five-minute walk north from the Musikverein on the Ring (Kärtnerring, just counter-clockwise from the Oper, the “outer” side). They sell the standing tickets for each Abonnementkonzert and Soirée starting the Monday morning before the concert, in person only. You can try later in the week too but don’t count on anything.

The Musikverein’s printed program says “ausverkauft” for all the Abonnementkonzerte and Soiréen, but that doesn’t mean the standing room is sold out, just that the seats are. Which they always are. (What’s the difference between an Abonnementkonzert and a Soirée? Unless you are a subscriber or aspire to become one [good luck with that], the only difference is Soiréen are always on weekdays, Abonnementkonzerte on weekends.)

Tickets for the Philharmoniker concerts listed under “Zusätzliche Konzerte” are available at the box office of whatever venue or organization is producing the concert following that presenter’s policies–the Musikverein, the Konzerthaus, etc. For example, the October 19 Philharmoniker concert with Mahler 6 is already on sale at the Musikverein box office, but standing tickets for the previous weekend’s Bruckner Abonnementkonzert won’t be on sale until Monday, October 11 at the Philharmoniker box office.

Don’t ask me why it’s like this, I’m guessing it has something to do with a contract signed in approximately 1893. Things don’t change very fast here–just look at these groups’ websites.

3. The evening of the concert
Once you have your ticket, no matter where you bought it, show up an hour or so before the concert and get in line for the hall to open. If it’s a big concert and you want to be able to see anything at all, show up earlier. If you don’t care if you can see, show up whenever. Check your coat and large bags downstairs beforehand, you can’t bring them into the hall. There are two lines, one for house left and one right. When it’s time to claim spots the ushers let everyone in and there is a rapid free-for-all into the big open space that constitutes standing room. The first row of spots disappear in the blink of an eye, go as fast as you possibly can. The people in the front can lean on the bar marking off the space and see stuff, as long as they aren’t behind a pillar (which always happens to me). Everyone else is just standing in the big open area, craning their necks. The big disadvantage is that you don’t have anything to lean on unless you are in the front. It’s pretty uncomfortable.

If an usher appears in standing room 10-15 minutes before the performance, run towards him or her as fast as you can, because he or she might have free extra tickets and will give you a seat. It only happens occasionally, though.

Not the best way to experience a concert, if you ask me, but seats at the Musikverein can be pricey and hard to get. The Staatsoper standing room is an excruciating process for a big reward, this is an easy process for a less awesome prize. But it works.

Riccardo Chailly and the case of the missing violas

September 11, 2010 No Comments

(I would first like to welcome all of you who followed Franz Welser-Möst’s Facebook and Twitter links. Danke schön for the link, Maestro, or rather thanks to whoever writes the maestro’s tweets and Facebook.)

The bows on the center-right side of the Gewandhausorchester Leipzig were moving furiously, but I couldn’t hear a thing. Herein I consider whether Schumann really was a crappy orchestrator after all, an obscure Mendelssohn piece that perhaps should stay that way, and some much more rewarding things about Friday night’s Musikverein concert, including some fine violin-playing from Frank Peter Zimmermann.

But first let’s talk anniversaries. Haul out your coffin full of poetry, because this year marks the 200th anniversary of Schumann’s birth. It seems like we just had a Schumann year. Because we did–2006 was the 150th anniversary of his death. But like Prokofiev’s proximity in death to Stalin, Schumann had to share that anniversary with Mozart, and didn’t really get much attention outside pianists and a few lieder-singers. This time he gets to share with both Chopin and Mahler. So, yeah, screwed again, in Vienna at least. Even the pianists and lieder-singers have other events to celebrate this time.

But his hometown orchestra, the Gewandhausorchester Leipzig, didn’t forget, even if their Vienna celebration was not always spotless. They managed to sneak birthday boy Mahler in there too.

Gewandhausorchester Leipzig, Riccardo Chailly; Sept. 10, 2010, Musikverein. Mendelssohn: Trompeten-Ouvertüre, op. 101; Schumann, Violin Concerto in d minor, WoO 23; Overtüre zu Lord Byrons “Manfred,” op. 115; Symphony No. 4, op. 120 (Mahler edition).

I don’t think Mendelssohn wrote any bad pieces of music, but the Trumpet Overture is not one of his more memorable. Lots of contrapuntal business plus endless sequences means it always seems to be purposefully headed somewhere, but it never arrives at any good themes. The orchestra was tight and precise, but the small string sections were frequently overpowered by the winds and the inner voices of the strings seemed inaudible, even in the dream acoustics of the Musikverein. Eponymous trumpets sounded fine, but I would have traded this one in for a good Hebrides or Midsummer any day.

The Schumann Violin Concerto is a problem work, suppressed for decades after the composer’s death because it supposedly contained signs of his incipient madness. There have been several rehabilitation attempts that claim the concerto’s strangeness is really great innovation. Either way, the piece has some interesting moments but they don’t really hang together. Frank Peter Zimmermann dispatched the awkward violin writing with effortless clarity and elegance and virtuosity in the last movement. The already-quiet orchestra seemed to recede entirely at most points. The many piano-like arpeggios sound like a warm-up for the Brahms Violin Concerto, Zimmermann put some good lyricism in them but I’m still not convinced.

The second half of the concert was much better. Both the Manfred Overture and the Symphony No. 4 were performed in Mahler’s pared-down editions (I wondered if the man near me with an Urtext symphony score had brought it for comparison or was very confused). Two anniversaries for the price of one! Maybe it was the Mahlerization but the balance between strings and winds was considerably better, though I still had trouble with the strings’ inner voices. I’m not sure what the tempo marking on the Romazne movement is (sorry, didn’t shell out for a program), but it sounded fast, almost an allegretto. Lovely wind solos, though. Chailly proved a master of pacing in both, particularly the symphony’s dramatic transition into the final movement, and the last few minutes of the symphony were fantastic, a great end to an uneven concert.

I know using Mahler or other touched-up editions is outré these days, but maybe Schumann does need it. Chailly defends Mahler’s edition in an interview in the Musikverein magazine, saying that Schumann’s orchestration really was too thick and Mahler gets closer to what Schumann wanted to do. I’m not even going there. Not today, at least. Municipal elections are in a few weeks and four political parties are parked on the four corners of the intersection nearest my apartment, and I’m finding the steady pffffts of Die Grünen blowing up balloons distracting. Those better be biodegradable balloons, guys.