Hagen Quartet
Lunch and Candy: €5
Program @ Konzerthaus: €2.70
Garderobe @ Konzerthaus: €.90
Belated Birthday drink for Gretchen @ Konzerthaus: €2.50
Blutorange Punsch: €2.50
Live string quartet concert: awesome!!!
The day started off with a 4-hour shift at work.....fun fun fun! After 1 Mike and I hung around IES and got lunch at the Billa.....delicious (and cheap) sausage-and-gherkin sandwiches on Semmel.....oh so good! I also got these delicious coconut-filled chocolate things...they're like Mounds bars, I guess.....anyway afterwards I went back home and then met Gretchen at the Kettenbrückengasse stop at 6:50. At this point let me back up:
Amanda, who was to be in Vienna through Christmas Eve (we actually had the same flight out of Schwechat) had bought us tickets to see the Hagen Quartet at the Konzerthaus....funny thing was that she left early because the program she was doing here was sucky, so she was going to be back in the States by the time the concert came around, so she just gave me the tickets! She wouldn't accept money for them, which was very sweet of her. Anyway, so I decided to sort of re-gift them by taking Gretchen to the concert instead of to Die Fledermaus at the Volksoper tonight (which she had already seen).
So Gretchen and I went to the Konzerthaus.....it was fun! The concert wasn't in the big hall, but the hall was still a decent size....good for a string quartet concert. Our seats weren't bad, either....we were in the ground floor, between about 16 or 20 rows back and on the left side.....we could see pretty well, and the sound was great. They did the Ravel string quartet, which was AMAZING.....I had forgotten how much I love that piece! And their performance of it was just really good.....I never knew that there were that many colors in the piece! They really played out all the different timbrel possibilities or the phrases....it was breathtaking in some moments. The second piece they did was some contemporary piece by some guy I had never heard of......it was especially weird because it would switch back and forth between his weird ponticello-artificial-harmonics-atonal stuff to transcriptions of this Josquin motet..........the Josquin sounded great in the ensemble, but I didn't like how he tried to integrate it into his shitty avant-garde stuff.....but I'm an old curmudgeon that way, I suppose (especially about early music!). The funniest thing about it, though, was that literally four bars[?] into the first part of it someone's cell phone went off VERY loudly......and it was playing the toreador song (not the beginning, but the "to-re-a-dor mon gar-----de" [or whatever] part) everyone sort of giggled softly, and a few seconds later the players smiled at each other and stopped and had a bit of a laugh, everyone applauded, and they started again.....it was great. Intermission was fun....I bought Gretchen a glass of this ultra-buttery wine that she likes and we talked to Matt (who was there randomly....) for a while. After the break they did a Beethoven string quartet.....an early one, by the sound of it, but I don't remember the opus number. They played it well, but not as well as the Ravel....of course they arguably had more to work with in the Ravel, but the Beethoven just seemed like it was missing something....something small, but it just didn't measure up; and I know it's not all Beethoven's fault! As an encore they did a slow movement from some other string quartet.....I had no idea who it was by, but I was guessing early or middle Beethoven or someone like that.....to make sure I went up to the stage to try and take a look at the music on the stands....there were a few other people trying to do something, and one of them asked the stage guy who was cleaning up to let him see it.....he handed it to him and we all looked....it was Haydn! I would never have guessed.....a couple of them also said "Haydn?" in a sort of quizzical tone. (as quizzical as the Viennese ever deign to sound) All in all it was an amazing concert!!
Afterwards we went back to Hietzing for Duné's birthday party, which was OK....there were a bunch of people there that I didn't know or didn't particularly like, so the whole dynamic was a bit weird. When Jim and Carla asked me if I wanted to get Punsch with them, I jumped on it.....so the two of them, Natalie, Gretel, Beth, and I went to this little stand by the apartment which sells Blutorange Punsch, which was AWESOME.....by FAR the best Punsch I've had.....it was especially funny to watch everyone's tongues turn gradually red-orange.....anyway after that fun I went back to the apartment with Gretel, Beth, and Jim, mostly to say good-bye to Gretchen, and when I got back to the party there was a whole new group of people there that were a bit more hip.....I didn't stay too long, but I did stay and talk to Mel and her sisters, who are AWESOME can I just say......then I went downstairs, said good-bye to Gretchen and went home for some well-needed sleep!
Program @ Konzerthaus: €2.70
Garderobe @ Konzerthaus: €.90
Belated Birthday drink for Gretchen @ Konzerthaus: €2.50
Blutorange Punsch: €2.50
Live string quartet concert: awesome!!!
The day started off with a 4-hour shift at work.....fun fun fun! After 1 Mike and I hung around IES and got lunch at the Billa.....delicious (and cheap) sausage-and-gherkin sandwiches on Semmel.....oh so good! I also got these delicious coconut-filled chocolate things...they're like Mounds bars, I guess.....anyway afterwards I went back home and then met Gretchen at the Kettenbrückengasse stop at 6:50. At this point let me back up:
Amanda, who was to be in Vienna through Christmas Eve (we actually had the same flight out of Schwechat) had bought us tickets to see the Hagen Quartet at the Konzerthaus....funny thing was that she left early because the program she was doing here was sucky, so she was going to be back in the States by the time the concert came around, so she just gave me the tickets! She wouldn't accept money for them, which was very sweet of her. Anyway, so I decided to sort of re-gift them by taking Gretchen to the concert instead of to Die Fledermaus at the Volksoper tonight (which she had already seen).
So Gretchen and I went to the Konzerthaus.....it was fun! The concert wasn't in the big hall, but the hall was still a decent size....good for a string quartet concert. Our seats weren't bad, either....we were in the ground floor, between about 16 or 20 rows back and on the left side.....we could see pretty well, and the sound was great. They did the Ravel string quartet, which was AMAZING.....I had forgotten how much I love that piece! And their performance of it was just really good.....I never knew that there were that many colors in the piece! They really played out all the different timbrel possibilities or the phrases....it was breathtaking in some moments. The second piece they did was some contemporary piece by some guy I had never heard of......it was especially weird because it would switch back and forth between his weird ponticello-artificial-harmonics-atonal stuff to transcriptions of this Josquin motet..........the Josquin sounded great in the ensemble, but I didn't like how he tried to integrate it into his shitty avant-garde stuff.....but I'm an old curmudgeon that way, I suppose (especially about early music!). The funniest thing about it, though, was that literally four bars[?] into the first part of it someone's cell phone went off VERY loudly......and it was playing the toreador song (not the beginning, but the "to-re-a-dor mon gar-----de" [or whatever] part) everyone sort of giggled softly, and a few seconds later the players smiled at each other and stopped and had a bit of a laugh, everyone applauded, and they started again.....it was great. Intermission was fun....I bought Gretchen a glass of this ultra-buttery wine that she likes and we talked to Matt (who was there randomly....) for a while. After the break they did a Beethoven string quartet.....an early one, by the sound of it, but I don't remember the opus number. They played it well, but not as well as the Ravel....of course they arguably had more to work with in the Ravel, but the Beethoven just seemed like it was missing something....something small, but it just didn't measure up; and I know it's not all Beethoven's fault! As an encore they did a slow movement from some other string quartet.....I had no idea who it was by, but I was guessing early or middle Beethoven or someone like that.....to make sure I went up to the stage to try and take a look at the music on the stands....there were a few other people trying to do something, and one of them asked the stage guy who was cleaning up to let him see it.....he handed it to him and we all looked....it was Haydn! I would never have guessed.....a couple of them also said "Haydn?" in a sort of quizzical tone. (as quizzical as the Viennese ever deign to sound) All in all it was an amazing concert!!
Afterwards we went back to Hietzing for Duné's birthday party, which was OK....there were a bunch of people there that I didn't know or didn't particularly like, so the whole dynamic was a bit weird. When Jim and Carla asked me if I wanted to get Punsch with them, I jumped on it.....so the two of them, Natalie, Gretel, Beth, and I went to this little stand by the apartment which sells Blutorange Punsch, which was AWESOME.....by FAR the best Punsch I've had.....it was especially funny to watch everyone's tongues turn gradually red-orange.....anyway after that fun I went back to the apartment with Gretel, Beth, and Jim, mostly to say good-bye to Gretchen, and when I got back to the party there was a whole new group of people there that were a bit more hip.....I didn't stay too long, but I did stay and talk to Mel and her sisters, who are AWESOME can I just say......then I went downstairs, said good-bye to Gretchen and went home for some well-needed sleep!
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