The Vienna Philharmonic comes to town: a dream come true!

[godofwealth]

In 2019, before the pandemic struck, I was giving a lecture tour through Europe and interspersed my scientific interactions with musical outings every evening in the various cities I visited. I was hoping to catch the Vienna Philharmonic in their famous Musikverein concert hall. I did manage to catch a concert in the Musikverein, but it was not the Vienna Philharmonic as they were out of town. As the saying goes, all good things come to those who wait. They are giving three magnificent concerts in U.C. Berkeley's Zellerbach Hall. I am going to all three of them, as lighting does not strike twice. One has to seize such musical opportunities as they arise.

The concerts range over many popular pieces in the classical repertoire: Mahler Symphony No 1., Mozart's Jupiter Symphony, and Dvorak's New World Symphony. Yefim Brofman is playing Beethoven's Third Piano Concerto, my favorite of his 5, as well. The conductor is Yannick Ne'zet-Se'guin, who I just heard conduct the Philadelphia Orchestra this past week in a trip to Philadelphia. Hearing live music always provides a sanity check on high end audio: it reminds me of how far we need to go before we attain anything like concert hall realism.

Vienna Philharmonic conducted by Yannick Nézet-Séguin

The magnificent Vienna Philharmonic returns to Cal Performances with three electrifying programs of symphonic masterworks.

calperformances.org

 

[Michael S.]

Have fun! The Wiener Philharmoniker are as good as you can imagine. I had once the opportunity to see them near my hometown.
They did Schumann 1 and Bruckner 1 with Christian Thielemann.

It was a concert I will remember!

 

[astrotoy]

We are also attending the VPO in Berkeley for the three concerts. The VPO has come to Berkeley about once or twice a decade, during US tours. We heard the conductor, Yannick Ne'zet-Se'guin, conducting the Philadelphia Orchestra a decade ago in London when they were on a European Tour in 2015.

We saw the VPO in Berkeley for 3 concerts in 2014 with Lorin Maazel as a last minute sub for Franz Welser-Most. Maazel conducted the first concert, and then Andris Nelsons came in for the final two concerts. We were told that Maazel had been called a couple of weeks earlier while he was in Germany giving some concerts. They asked his availability and he checked his calendar and the flight schedules from Europe and said he could arrive in LA (where the VPO was going to be giving two concerts before Berkeley) in time for the concert, but not in time for the dress rehearsal the day before. He left shortly after the Berkeley concert, I think back to Europe to resume his regular schedule. Maazel passed away that summer at the age of 84.

Many people rank the VPO as one of the top three orchestras in the world (along with the Berlin Philharmonic and the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra of Amsterdam.) Like the OP we have been to the Musikverein, but heard another orchestra, not the VPO.

Larry

 

[godofwealth]

That reminds me that when I was a much younger graduate student in Pittsburgh (at Carnegie Mellon) in the mid-1980s, one of the wisest things I did was take a year's student's subscription series tickets to the Pittsburgh Symphony. Lorin Maazel was the conductor then, and I've heard him conduct on many occasions. It was a transformative experience to hear a full orchestra playing in a concert hall. I guess that more than anything else got me hooked on high end audio! For the then paltry sum of $5/concert, I got seated in row 5 close to the orchestra, and enjoyed hearing a wide range of music as well as guest conductors (from Charles Dutoit to Michael Tilson Thomas). My most memorable concert experience was hearing Jessye Norman sing Richard Strauss' Four Last Songs. I never imagined a human voice could project with that intensity across a large hall.

 

[astrotoy]

What a thrill to hear Jessye Norman live in the Four Last Songs!!

Student tickets are a great way for orchestras to bring the younger generation into classical music. In college (in the mid '60's) the Boston Symphony had open rehearsals that were close to being free (I think $5 and the seating was open, so if you got there a bit early you could have great seats.) Leinsdorf was the music director then and his normal procedure was to play the entire program straight through, with no stops. So it was just like attending the regular concert. I got to hear Charles Munch, the previous MD of the BSO guest conduct the Saint-Saens Organ Symphony with Berj Zamkochian playing the organ, the same as in the famous Living Stereo recording. I remember one time that Jean Martinon was a guest conductor, and he treated the open rehearsal like a real rehearsal, so we in the audience heard starts and stops and repeating short passages over and over again. I don't think we heard more than a small fraction of the actual pieces in the program.

When I got out to Cal for grad school in 1967, I got student tickets to the SF Symphony. Joseph Krips was the music director then, and the student tickets were for the regular Wednesday evening performance. I bought the entire season for many years while I was a student, so heard many, many concerts. I think it was in 1969 or 1970 that the young Seiji Ozawa was a guest conductor at one of the concerts. We didn't know that he was essentially auditioning to be the next music director after the aging Krips.

Larry

 

[kswanson27]

What a thrill to hear Jessye Norman live in the Four Last Songs!!

Student tickets are a great way for orchestras to bring the younger generation into classical music. In college (in the mid '60's) the Boston Symphony had open rehearsals that were close to being free (I think $5 and the seating was open, so if you got there a bit early you could have great seats.) Leinsdorf was the music director then and his normal procedure was to play the entire program straight through, with no stops. So it was just like attending the regular concert. I got to hear Charles Munch, the previous MD of the BSO guest conduct the Saint-Saens Organ Symphony with Berj Zamkochian playing the organ, the same as in the famous Living Stereo recording. I remember one time that Jean Martinon was a guest conductor, and he treated the open rehearsal like a real rehearsal, so we in the audience heard starts and stops and repeating short passages over and over again. I don't think we heard more than a small fraction of the actual pieces in the program.

When I got out to Cal for grad school in 1967, I got student tickets to the SF Symphony. Joseph Krips was the music director then, and the student tickets were for the regular Wednesday evening performance. I bought the entire season for many years while I was a student, so heard many, many concerts. I think it was in 1969 or 1970 that the young Seiji Ozawa was a guest conductor at one of the concerts. We didn't know that he was essentially auditioning to be the next music director after the aging Krips.

Larry

I was a senior at Cal in 1967 and spent my musical recreation time riding my Triumph across the Bay Bridge to the Fillmore, etc. to hear the Dead, Country Joe and the Fish and a few others. A friend talked me into going to the Wednesday evening concert in Berkeley and I was hooked. Been a classical music fan ever since. Small world.

 

[mxk116]

In 2019, before the pandemic struck, I was giving a lecture tour through Europe and interspersed my scientific interactions with musical outings every evening in the various cities I visited. I was hoping to catch the Vienna Philharmonic in their famous Musikverein concert hall. I did manage to catch a concert in the Musikverein, but it was not the Vienna Philharmonic as they were out of town. As the saying goes, all good things come to those who wait. They are giving three magnificent concerts in U.C. Berkeley's Zellerbach Hall. I am going to all three of them, as lighting does not strike twice. One has to seize such musical opportunities as they arise.

The concerts range over many popular pieces in the classical repertoire: Mahler Symphony No 1., Mozart's Jupiter Symphony, and Dvorak's New World Symphony. Yefim Brofman is playing Beethoven's Third Piano Concerto, my favorite of his 5, as well. The conductor is Yannick Ne'zet-Se'guin, who I just heard conduct the Philadelphia Orchestra this past week in a trip to Philadelphia. Hearing live music always provides a sanity check on high end audio: it reminds me of how far we need to go before we attain anything like concert hall realism.

Vienna Philharmonic conducted by Yannick Nézet-Séguin

The magnificent Vienna Philharmonic returns to Cal Performances with three electrifying programs of symphonic masterworks.

calperformances.org

Wow, what line up of music! I wholeheartedly agreed with your strategy; carpe diem!

 

[hifiguy42]

Congratulations - sounds like an amazing opportunity. Enjoy!

 

[wil]

What a thrill to hear Jessye Norman live in the Four Last Songs!!

Student tickets are a great way for orchestras to bring the younger generation into classical music. In college (in the mid '60's) the Boston Symphony had open rehearsals that were close to being free (I think $5 and the seating was open, so if you got there a bit early you could have great seats.) Leinsdorf was the music director then and his normal procedure was to play the entire program straight through, with no stops. So it was just like attending the regular concert. I got to hear Charles Munch, the previous MD of the BSO guest conduct the Saint-Saens Organ Symphony with Berj Zamkochian playing the organ, the same as in the famous Living Stereo recording. I remember one time that Jean Martinon was a guest conductor, and he treated the open rehearsal like a real rehearsal, so we in the audience heard starts and stops and repeating short passages over and over again. I don't think we heard more than a small fraction of the actual pieces in the program.

When I got out to Cal for grad school in 1967, I got student tickets to the SF Symphony. Joseph Krips was the music director then, and the student tickets were for the regular Wednesday evening performance. I bought the entire season for many years while I was a student, so heard many, many concerts. I think it was in 1969 or 1970 that the young Seiji Ozawa was a guest conductor at one of the concerts. We didn't know that he was essentially auditioning to be the next music director after the aging Krips.

Larry

Speaking of the SF orchestra , I’ve been going through their Mahler symphonies with Tilson Thomas. What a great sounding orchestra — and recordings!

 

[adrianywu]

Hearing the VPO at the Musikverein is not easy, as tickets for the subscription concerts only become available when the subscribers return the tickets of concerts they can't attend. The number of tickets available to the public is therefore highly variable. What I like to do is to hear them at the Théâtre de Champs-Élysées in Paris, where the VPO performs several concerts each year. This was the theatre where most of the Stravinsky ballets were premiered, including the notorious premiere of the Rite of Spring. The acoustics of the hall is to die for. It is a smaller hall than the Golden Salle of the Musikverein, and the sound has a presence that is mesmerising. The dynamics is off the charts, with a warm balance, but it can get very loud. I measured the peak at 109dB the last time I was there during the Shostakovich 5th. Tickets are not as hard to buy, as long as you do it within a couple of weeks of the start of the ticket sales.

 

[Blackmorec]

Way back when, I lived in Germany and had a season ticket to the Mannheim Rosengarten series of Philharmonic Concerts performed by guest orchestras.

Needless to say, the VPO concert was oversubscribed, so subject to a lottery. By a massive stroke of luck we got 2 seats centre in row 6. We took our seats and the first thing I noticed were the instruments left on stage. Never had I seen such an array of battered looking instruments. Contrabasses and cellos were so well used they had large patches where the varnish had been entirely worn away, leaving what looked like unstained, bare wood. Brass instruments appeared equally battered, with dents, and predominantly matt finishes where you’d expect pristine shiny brass.

The orchestra took the stage and shocking as it now seams, they were all men.

The opening piece was a Mendelssohn symphony which I am wholly familiar with, but what I’d never ever heard before was the sense of perfection that made the music so emotionally overwhelming. I have never heard an orchestra start and stop so precisely. It gave the music a sense of flow, life and timing with a musical message that was so starkly beautiful I spent the entire performance dabbing away tears, leaving me with a pocketfull of damp tissues.

I’ve attended hundreds of concerts by many top-flight orchestras but my response to the VPO was the most powerful I’ve ever experienced.

 

[godofwealth]

Nice write up of the Vienna Philharmonic’s performances in Carnegie Hall conducted by the legendary 83-year-old maestro Riccardo Muti. They played some of same pieces they are going to play at Berkeley starting this evening.

Vienna Philharmonic and Riccardo Muti Return to Carnegie Hall

Riccardo Muti, in what felt like a victory lap, returned to Carnegie Hall to lead the Philharmonic’s annual three-day series of concerts.

www.nytimes.com