Konzerthaus
Why is it significant?
Here on the Lothringerstrasse stands the Konzerthaus, a long, light building with tall windows and a touch of Art Nouveau in its ornament. Where the Musikverein feels like a temple, this one is more like a well-designed machine for music: not one main hall but several, side by side.
Key Facts
| Place | Konzerthaus |
|---|---|
| Address | Lothringerstraße 20, 1030 Wien, Austria |
| Geo Coordinates | 48.20060, 16.37760 |
| Part of Walk | Vienna in Three-Quarter Time: Mozart, Beethoven, Strauss and the City of Music |
| Generated | Generated |
Here on the Lothringerstrasse stands the Konzerthaus, a long, light building with tall windows and a touch of Art Nouveau in its ornament. Where the Musikverein feels like a temple, this one is more like a well-designed machine for music: not one main hall but several, side by side.
It opened on 19 October 1913, and the aged Emperor Franz Joseph came to the opening. Richard Strauss wrote a Festive Prelude for the occasion, for a huge orchestra and organ. The emperor was 83; within three years he was dead, and five years later his empire had gone too. The architects were Fellner and Helmer, the theatre specialists who built playhouses all over Central Europe, working here with Ludwig Baumann, the man who also designed the War Ministry on the Ring.
The Konzerthaus was meant to be modern and open. Its Great Hall seats more than 1,800, and beside it the Mozart Hall and the Schubert Hall serve chamber music, so several concerts can run on the same evening. From the start its programmes reached beyond the classical canon, and today you may find jazz, world music and contemporary premieres here as easily as a Beethoven cycle.
It shares its city block with the Vienna Ice Skating Club, whose open-air rink spreads out next door every winter. So on a cold January night you can step out of a Schubert quartet and hear skates scraping and pop music drifting across the ice... two kinds of Viennese happiness, a wall apart.
The Viennese love to argue about the two houses. The Musikverein is the elder, the golden, the traditional; the Konzerthaus is the younger, a little more adventurous. Most music lovers quietly keep a subscription to both. Now walk round the corner to the north, to a small square where Beethoven himself sits in bronze.