Music in Vienna

There is no finer city in which to hear music than Vienna. Or, to put it more felicitously, there is no finer city in which to listen to music for, as music-lovers know, there is a world of difference between hearing and listening. In the Imperial City, where most of the great composers in the Austro-German tradition lived and worked, you are on your mettle. As the Italian guide said to the American tourist who had popped into the Uffizi gallery in Florence to find out if there was anything worth seeing: ‘Here, signore, it is not the paintings that are on trial.’

In Vienna there is no greater musical pleasure than sitting in the golden hall of the Musikverein, particularly when the Vienna Philharmonic is playing. An opera orchestra by tradition, which spends the week on the other side of the Ringstrasse at the Staatsoper, the Philharmonic give concerts in the Musikverein on Saturday afternoons and Sunday mornings.