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Brahms and Liszt in Vienna and Bratislava

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Brahms and Liszt in Vienna and Bratislava Wednesday evening, 16 November 2005

On Monday night I arrived at Stansted from Bratislava and finally got home in the early hours of Tuesday morning. The experience (three days fitting in two European destinations) was tiring but rewarding nonetheless. For one thing everywhere i went, even in Bratislava there were plaques and dedications to some of my favourite composers. My first sighting was Liszt in a street in the Old Town area of Bratislava.

Things were even more tuned to the musical scene in Vienna. With the somewhat annoying exception of Mozarts house (closed for two months due to refurbishment) Steve and I had a blast in Vienna. In particular was the Haus der Musik which was a musicians dream come true. It brought together some good exhibits from the area, especially from the conductors of the Vienna Philharmonic, which included Hans Richter and Gustav Mahler and some of the most top class interactive experiences i've enjoyed. That includes the science exhibition at the millennium dome and the exploratorium in San Francisco which is specifically geared to be highly interactive.

So after seeing artifacts of the Vienna conductors we moved up a level where there a couple of sound experience rooms. One supposed to be like the womb, including physical reverberations another just with some super dooper 7.1 sound system playing an electronic music composition designed specifically for it. Better yet were the musical experiments with headphones and microphones. These explained concepts about sounds such as pitch and modulation. There were too many to list.

The possible highlight was the tour of the great composers. This was, at it's core, a typical audio guide around 5 composers (Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert, Strauss and Mahler) however each room was set in the period of the composer with various instruments, manuscripts and letters. Also the audio guide was synced to displays and pictures which highlighted aspects of what you were listening too to help.

Most amusing, was the virtual conductor. Whilst not strictly accurate in that you only had to move the baton up and down, the orchestra did respond and play faster and slower depending on you movements and, if you were bad enough, stopped whilst a member stood up to berate you to the applause of his colleagues! There was even more than this but we literally ran out of time in that place. So if you ever go to Vienna the Haus der Musik gets a 5 / 5 in my rating, even if you only have a passing interest in classical music.

 

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