Musikverein

Now that I'm finally back home in the states, I can finish sharing my adventure. While I was in Vienna, I also went to a concert at the Musikverein, pictured above. It is a beautiful concert hall dipped in gold. I saw the Vienna Symphonic Orchestra playing a Bach piece and a Bruckner symphony, and I can now say that this was my favorite performance of my whole trip. Bruckner was so easy to listen to and sounded almost like a movie sound track, and the orchestra was great, although I must say I prefer the Vienna Philharmonic. Sitting in the Grosser Saal (main hall) of the Musikverein, I felt like I was in the Ark of the Covenant. Everything was covered in gold and the ceiling was painted with scenes that looked like they could have been on the ceiling of a church (picture below).

The audience was mostly older white people and Asian people, still older but not quite gray-haired, that I guessed to be tourists. I was the youngest by far and received some surprised glances from the other audience members around me because of how young I am. The atmosphere during the performance was much more tense than the opera house. There was this pressure in the air that told you not to make a sound, do not even sneeze or breathe too loudly, because everyone is focused on the sounds around them. Any disturbance to the music pulls you right out of the trance that the musicians placed you in, and pulls you back to reality. For this reason, between every movement all the coughs and fidgeting held back while the musicians were playing were released all at once. If they had done those things during the piece, the sheer weight of the glares is enough to make you want to sink into your seat (I'm not speaking from personal experience but from observation). This tenseness may also be exacerbated by the fact that the concert hall is fairly small, so it is easier to see who exactly is making all the noise. This was by far the most tense atmosphere of a classical concert I experienced.