Vienna Phil at the Musikverein!

The day started off with AA&A tour of the Italian Renaissance stuff at the Kunsthistorisches Museum, which was fun. It is in, a lot of ways, noticeably better than the northern stuff of the same period, but that's just my taste, which has naturally been tuned toward the Italian. That was fun, and afterwards I went back home to do a tiny bit of grocery shopping before meeting Allison to go over the Bach. I ended up being a bit late, but it turned out OK because her class was also going on some tour that got out really late, so she didn't show up at the center until 2:30, which was OK since we really didn't need an hour to go over the Bach. After that was music history, which was fairly ordinary. After that I worked in the library with Christian until about 6:45, at which point I left early to stand in line for Stehplatz at the Musikverein. I had already purchased my ticket, but I wanted to make sure and get there early so that I would get a decent spot, either in the front on the rail or in the back so I could sit against the wall. I saw Dave there, so I waited in line with him. It turns out that Gerald had assigned his whole Music in Performance class to come to the concert, so there were about 15 IES kids there, which was more than I expected to see at the Musikverein on a Wednesday night. I chose to sit in the back for the first half at least, since I had borrowed a score of the Mozart from the library, and I figured I should sit down when I read it.

The concert was, needless to say, very, very good. First was a Villa-lobos symphony "En memória de Mozart." I don't really know why it was in memory of Mozart, but perhaps a little research would clarify that. I have to admit that it didn't really grab my attention....I sort of mentally dozed off in the middle. Second on the program was Mozart "Haffner" Symphony, which was very good. I liked having the score to read along with....I'll have to bring more scores to concerts....after the intermission they played Tchaikovsky's 4th Symphony, which was very very good! I'd never heard it before, but it was very cool. Afterwards, the concertmaster stood up and said something to the effect of thanking the conductor for his years of service and something about how it was his last concert with them, or something.......and they played a "thank you" piece....I have no idea what it was, but it sounded like a Strauß polka or something.....it was really cute.