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| View from balcony of Schönbrunn looking out towards the Gloriette (pavilion on top of the hill) |
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| Looking back towards Schönbrunn from behind the Neptune Fountain |
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| Looking down at Schönbrunn from in front of the Gloriette (and actually no, that's not Stephansdom on the horizon, though I'm on a quest to discover just what it is) |
Well, they were going to extremes for this event in anticipation of approximately 10,000 people, so when I got there on Wednesday it looked a tad bit different:
I meandered around for a bit just enjoying the gardens (what wasn't blocked off) before deciding to track down a security guard or someone setting stuff up to see if I could get an estimate on what time people usually started showing up. To my dismay, not only was I told that all of the seats were reserved for ticket holders (i.e. sponsors), but also that people usually got there as soon as the garden opened at 6:00 in the morning. The concert started at 9:00pm. However, I had a hunch that that fellow was pulling the tourist with the broken German-speaking-ability's leg, so I asked around a little more and got various responses closer to 5:00pm, which I found to be a much more satisfactory answer. But I really did want the best spot possible and nobody really seemed all that certain what time people started to wait, so I thought it would be best to get there bright and early anyway and just spend the day coveting my stellar spot and reading a book. Or two.
Thursday, early o'clock, on a dark and cloudy morning, I gathered my day's supply of food and entertainment and headed out to Schönbrunn to wait. Let's just say I got there unnecessarily early. Thus I decided to go back into the city center and get a real breakfast, then headed back out to Schönbrunn around noon. Still way too early, I knew that, but I figured by that point it would be a huge shame if I wandered off through the grounds for an hour or two and came back to find a throng of people, so I settled in for the long haul. Around 2:30 I gained a companion in the form of a friendly French fellow, Marc, who was studying in Innsbruck for the summer. We read, we chatted, we crowd watched, and we repeated until maybe 3:30 when a couple came over and asked a guard about the seating. We happened to overhear that in fact the back half of the seats would be available for the public, and they would be opening the gates that extended a little ways behind us at 6:00. So Marc and I surreptitiously eased over to the gates and resumed our post. The couple was not pleased to be third in line, but hey, I had put in my fair share of waiting! Not long after a legitimate crowd started forming, and at 4:45 they went ahead and opened the gate for the seats. I secured two spots front and center for Marc and myself (there was an aisle on either side and as I started walking down one aisle the couple brushed past Marc and started running up the other, and I just wasn't about to let them get the best seats). So essentially my view went from this:
to this:
Now at least we were (more) comfortable for the next four hours and fifteen minutes that we would still be waiting. But since we had determined seats, Marc and I could take turns getting up to go get something to drink or just stretch our legs. Sometime during the six o'clock hour it started looking like this:
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| And this is only the 'seated' section! |
...9:00 finally arrived, the Vienna Philharmonic was out on stage, and we were just waiting for Valery Gergiev to make his appearance.
The concert was spectacular, if a little on the pop side; they had a huge light show that would get cooler in color and dance around dramatically during dark pieces, and brighten up festively during lighter pieces. There were also fireworks. The program included:
Franz Liszt - "Les Préludes", Tone Poem
Nicolò Paganini - Violin Concerto No. 1 in D major, 1st Movement (arr. Fritz Kreisler)
Jean Sibelius - Scene with Cranes, op. 44/2
Modest Mussorgsky - Pictures at an Exhibition (Instrumentation by Maurice Ravel)
I was rather surprised about how good they sounded considering it was outside and a bit windy. Granted, it was evident that these were phenomenal musicians and it just wasn't possible to hear the nuance of their playing, but for what it was and how it was set up I was very impressed with the sound quality. ASIDE: If you ever have the chance to attend this lovely event, do not sit up on the hill! Perhaps it was just because they were expecting rain, but there were no speakers up there so people were getting excited, anticipating laying out under the clouds and hearing some great music, and instead they heard faint whispers of almost nothing. For your listening pleasure, here's a bit of Wiener Blut which they did as an encore (the Viennese seriously love this song. I don't think I've been to a single concert here when it wasn't performed). I apologize for the fuzziness at first and the photographer that stands up in front of me at the end; luckily he was only there for a few minutes.
They also had huge screens to project the concert for those further back, and there was a really neat shot of Gergiev that they kept showing from the perspective of the orchestra with Schönbrunn in the background. I couldn't get a good picture of it because there was a column of lights right in my line of vision, but it essentially looked like this:
Except at night. And perhaps a little less Photoshopped. The screen also showed ballerinas up on a stage in front of the Gloriette, among other things.
The concert lasted over an hour and a half and despite it being bitterly cold out, I would say it was well worth the wait. And it didn't even take too long to get out after the concert, even when fighting these crowds:
I was expecting it to take nearly an hour to get home with trying to move through/with the crowd back through the palace and out the front gate, then wait in line for the Ubahn (something you never have to do on a regular basis), etc. But I was back by 11:30, so all in all it was a successful, if long, day!
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