Musikverein & the Golden Hall
Why is it significant?
In front of you stands a building like an ancient temple, warm ochre and red, with columns, statues and tall arched windows.
Key Facts
| Place | Musikverein & the Golden Hall |
|---|---|
| Address | Musikvereinsplatz 1, 1010 Wien, Austria |
| Geo Coordinates | 48.20050, 16.37270 |
| Part of Walk | Vienna in Three-Quarter Time: Mozart, Beethoven, Strauss and the City of Music |
| Generated | Generated |
In front of you stands a building like an ancient temple, warm ochre and red, with columns, statues and tall arched windows. This is the Musikverein, the house of the Society of Friends of Music, and for millions of people who have never been to Vienna its main hall is the most familiar room in the city.
The Society of Friends of Music was founded in 1812 by music lovers from the middle classes and the nobility. On 6 January 1870 it opened this building by Theophil Hansen, the same Dane who built the parliament, on land given by the emperor. Johannes Brahms directed the society's concerts for three seasons in the 1870s, and its archive guards precious manuscripts by Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert and Brahms.
Its heart is the Great Hall, the Golden Hall: a long shoebox of gilded caryatids, crystal chandeliers and a painted ceiling, seating around 1,700 people, plus standing places. Many musicians call its sound the finest of any concert hall on earth. Hansen had no modern acoustic science to work with; the shape of the room, the wooden floor and the hollow spaces beneath it are usually given the credit. In 2004 four new smaller halls opened, dug out beneath the building, so that the old house could grow without changing a stone above ground.
Every 1 January the Vienna Philharmonic plays its New Year's Concert here, waltzes and polkas of the Strauss family broadcast around the world. Its origins are less cheerful: the first such concert was given on 31 December 1939, under the Nazi regime, and it served the regime's propaganda. Today the orchestra tells that history openly.
The encores are fixed by tradition: the Blue Danube, and then the Radetzky March, with the whole hall clapping along and the conductor turning round to conduct the audience. Now walk east along the Lothringerstrasse to the other great concert house of Vienna, built forty-three years later.