A Day in Vienna

A Day in Vienna – from Angie Wednesday 17 June

Coming from Madrid, we are still on Madrileno time, so rose late, as did Kathy, our host here in the Judenplatz. She is very welcoming, and she makes rooms in her large flat available to visitors to Vienna. Her father Emanuel Fiscus was a Holocaust survivor, and led a remarkable life. On the Judenplatz is a large memorial to the 65,000 Austrian Jews who were murdered by the Nazis. I can see it from our window.

It’s a big concrete rectangle shaped as a mausoleum, and the 4 walls are a relief of rows of books with their spines inverted, so you can’t see what they are. Stories which won’t be told.

Nearby is the Art Forum am Judenplatz, which is showing the Holocaust survivor Adolf Frankl’s permanent exhibition Art Against Oblivion. These are telling and heart-wrenching images in expressionist style. These things must be confronted and never forgotten, although it has taken the Viennese long enough.

Arrival of a transport on the ramp in Birkenau, October 1944

After the morning muesli and rounds of emails, it was down to our local coffee shop and Bäckerei:

natürliche Grimm in Kurrentgasse.
Then a delightful ramble through old Wien along back streets as well as down the Kärntnerstrasse, where we dropped in at the Nordsee and had a very reasonably priced snack lunch. I had a Bismarckhering roll: delicious! And then on, to the Konzerthaus, as the start of a wonderful musical day, and nearby, the superb Arnold Schönberg Center in the afternoon. It has films, voice recordings, and his study transported exactly preserved from Los Angeles with his wooden hand made sticky tape dispenser. He invented them! He made lots of useful things, such as a five – pencil contraption so he could make manuscript paper. Also music recordings, and quite a few of his paintings, also programs and documentary records. There is also a very good library and a performance space.

Rob loved it too: “Arnold Schönberg – not only a revolutionary musician but an inspirational idealist, writer, painter and inventor… So much I still have to learn… see Arnold Schönberg Center Wien, probably one of the best museums I have ever visited…” You could sit down on a sofa !!! and browse through some very interesting books, and various facsimiles of his diaries and all sorts of objects and written records he made or acquired during his life.

On the way back, we had an obligatory coffee, a grosser brauner at the Café Bräunerhof, where we read a range of newspapers, Angie the Süddeutsche Zeitung or Neue Züricher Zeitung, Rob the Guardian, London Times or New York Times. This is one of the many wonderful and often distinguished coffeehouses of Vienna. Here the famous playwright and novelist Thomas Bernhard used to be a regular visitor; his photo is on the wall. It has a wonderful atmosphere of comfortable (gemütlich!) and slightly worn surroundings, and no one is ever pressured to leave. We go there every day actually.

We walked past Antiquariat Christian Nebehay in the Annagasse, near the Staatsoper. I used to live here, in a small flat, during the time I studied at the Academy.

Professor Nebehay had an Antiquariat, where he sold old books and prints, there for many years, and now the business is run by his successor, Dr. Krüger. Christian and Renée Nebehay were wonderful friends to me.

The other thing we did was to go to a terrific recital of French melodie with US mezzo Susan Graham and accompanist Malcolm Martineau in the Wiener Konzerthaus.

It was a wonderful recital ranging right through 19th and 20th century French song, from Bizet, Faure, Gounod Saint-Saens to Debussy, Duparc, Ravel, Messiaen, Hahn, Satie, and Poulenc. Quite a tour-de-force, and a long-ish program. There were composers I’ve never come across, e.g. Paladilhe, Caplet, Rosenthal. She is an excellent recitalist and I hadn’t heard her at all before, though she came to Australia a few times when Edo de Waart was Chief Conductor of the SSO -they were very close! Beautiful voice, and very good-looking person – extremely musical, great technique, the whole program memorized, and in defiance of that idiot Graham MacDonald’s requirements, she didn’t chat with the audience!!! Beautiful clothes, too. Of course, perfect French. Very satisfying indeed.

Rob: This was a very fine recital, I was entertained, amused, educated, but mainly carried away to another world by Graham’s artistry and superb performance. I found the reaction of the good Viennese burghers remarkable stolid, as with Australia many could hardly wait to get to the parking lot, rather than hear an exquisite Duparc encore. Many must think it’s more important to attend than to listen.

Tonight (Thur 18) we’re going to hear the ORF Radio-Symphonieorchester Wien with conductor Bertrand de Billy, violin Frank Peter Zimmerman, and program Beethoven Violin Concerto, R. Srauss and Schlee, also in the Konzerthaus. As we write this, the children in the kindergarten across the street from this room are singing songs accompanied by guitar – they do this every morning and it is beautiful. They’re all more or less in tune!

There’s lots of jazz on here. In fact there’s a lot of everything on here. And so to bed, after catching up on the Iran election aftermath via CNN on TV.