Liederabend

The trouble with the planning for this trip is that it extended over many months and saw a few detours on the way. For much of the past year the whole festival was up in the air. There were also some changes made in the programming. The major one was the cancellation of a production of a Berlioz opera, The Damnation of Faust as I recall. I requested a ticket to the August 22nd performance. But it seems the whole production was canceled. Another change in program turned up yesterday. I thought I had ordered a ticket to a performance of the lieder cycle Dichterliebe by Robert Schumann for yesterday, but when I arrived, I discovered that while it was indeed a lieder recital, it was not the program I expected but instead consisted of songs by Ernest Chausson, Clara Schumann, Brahms and others. Entirely my fault, I am sure. When they sent me the list of tickets I was being allotted, a lot of information was not included: sometimes names of artists, often composers and repertoire. Just the way they do things, I guess. For soloist concerts they merely say "Solistenkonzert" on the ticket with no indication of who the soloist actually is. This can be discovered by reference to the whole festival schedule. Normally this isn't much of a problem, but it seems that somewhere along the line the Robert Schumann Dichterliebe program got changed to the Ernest Chausson program and I didn't notice.

The performers, Benjamin Bernheim and Mathieu Pordoy, were quite fine, but I'm really not much of a fan of French chanson. However I did get a photo of this nifty fountain in the Herbert von Karajanplatz:

Tonight, I am really sure, is Riccardo Muti conducting the Vienna Philharmonic in Beethoven's Missa Solemnis.