So, I haven't updated in over two weeks, and I'm not going to try to recount everything that I did since my last post, but here is the overview:

Lots of practicing
College application essays
A couple of bars
The first IES concert (I played Mozart with my friend nate - It went really well)
Went to a Yoga class taught by one of my friends - I'm pretty sore all over.

Midterms start tomorrow and continue through next wednesday, so I'll be busy with that stuff for the next few days. After that, I'm hoping to make my last recordings for my applications and really get those finished up.

Starting next week, the Berlin Staatskapelle is performing the first five Mahler Symphonies conducted by Barenboim and Boulez. It's really going to be pretty amazing - I got tickets for 2, 3, and 5 so I'll be going a bunch next week. After studying Mahler 3 in my class for the last 5 weeks, it should be pretty amazing to hear it live.

The weather here is really starting to change. Days are getting overcast and colder. It's making me think about skiing and other wintertime activities. It's nice to see the change of seasons - I feel like I'm really settling into a bit of a boring rhythm of practicing every day - any change is welcome!

Well, sorry for the boring update without any pictures. I haven't been carrying my camera around as much with me. I guess I haven't done too many exciting activities lately, anyway. Hopefully I'll have something interesting in my next entry.

Bis bald

This weekend, I took a very cool trip to an area of Austria called Styria (Die Steiermark, auf Deutsch). Although the trip was really quick, I had a great time and I'm really glad I got to get out of Vienna, even if for a short weekend.

I got up around 6:15 to leave on saturday morning. It was super early, but it was kinda nice to get out into the city that early in the morning. I walked past the Flohmarkt to get on the U-bahn, and it was very cool to see people setting up their stands that early in the morning, and even seeing some early-birds trying to find the best deals of the day before the sun had even risen.

From Parent's Visit and Styria

I made it to the bus and we took our 3 hour bus ride to an open-air museum in Styria. The open air museum had the potential to be really cool, but our tour guide kinda sucked. Basically, they had taken very old houses and structures which demonstrated early rural life from all over austria and reconstructed them in this one valley to make a little town that kind of spanned a few hundred years of the life of rural austrians. I thought it was interesting, but the tour crawled along at a snail's pace.

From Parent's Visit and Styria

From Parent's Visit and Styria

From Parent's Visit and Styria

From Parent's Visit and Styria

From Parent's Visit and Styria

From Parent's Visit and Styria

We then had lunch in a Gasthaus by the museum, got back on the bus and drove to Graz, which is such a wonderful city. It is the second largest city in Austria, but only has a popluation of 250,000! It's very beautiful and feels like a large village, rather than an important city. It's also surrounded by beautiful mountains. We had a tour of Graz with the most hillarious tour guide ever. She was so entertaining and told us that she had just come fromt he Weinstrasse (the road through the mountains where there are a ton of vinyards) and was actually "A little tipsy!" We saw a lot of the sights of Graz and noted some places to come back later when we had free time at night.

From Parent's Visit and Styria

From Parent's Visit and Styria

From Parent's Visit and Styria

From Parent's Visit and Styria

From Parent's Visit and Styria

From Parent's Visit and Styria

From Parent's Visit and Styria

Then we went to the Hostel, which was very similar to the Hostel in Mariazell (more of a Family Gasthaus). We had dinner at the Hostel and I showered and hung around a little, had a beer with the Dune and Bill, the former students who are now like pseudo advisors here, and waited for people to be ready to go. The story of my night was a little long and convoluted, but the abridged version is: the group that I was goign to leave with left without me, then I went with another group who wanted to go to a bar. I was planning on having a drink with them and then go the museums on my own, but they took so long ot leave, that by the time we got into the city, I just went off on my own to go to the museums. (I forgot to mention, Saturday night was the "Lange Nacht ins Museum" - all museums all over austria are open till 1am and you can buy a pass for 11 euros to get into as many as you want!). By this point, I got a little concerned - I was on my own in a city at night that I really didn't know at all and I had had 2 drinks. But I had such a feeling of accomplishment when I I found the place to buy the tickets, got on a "lange nacht" bus, it ended up beign the wrong bus, so I had a great conversation with one of the people working for Lange nacht in german, ended up back where the bus left from, got on the right bus, and headed to the right museum. I felt like "Hell yeah, I can speak german!" - It was a really great feeling of accomplishment.

Anyway, I had planned to go to 2 museums, the Kunsthaus Graz, which is like this crazy alien-looking modern museum. It was really incredible and I ended up bumping into group 1 there. A few of us then went to the 2nd museum, a geological museum with a lot of really incredible fossils and animal stuff. Then people wanted to go to a bar to meet up with group number 2, so we found our way there, but by the time we got there, I was super wiped out from all the walking of the day. A friend of mine named Eric, Mimi and I stayed for a drink and then walked back and crashed - I was so tired!!

From Parent's Visit and Styria

From Parent's Visit and Styria

Today was fun as well - woke up for breakfast around 9:30. At 10 we left for the Weinstrasse adn stopped at a winery on this giant hill overlooking the most beautiful landscape.

From Parent's Visit and Styria

From Parent's Visit and Styria

The day was absolutely gorgeous and picturesque and people enjoyed their refrshing Sturm. We then drove to a town called Gamlitz which has a famous carnival and parade.

From Parent's Visit and Styria

I had a great Schnitzel sandwich and enjoyed the atmosphere, but I was really pretty tired. I ended up going into a cafe with a girl from my German class, Elizabeth (One of my friends thought her name was Lauren, and kept calling her Lauren throughout the day, so I started calling her Lauren as a joke!). Then at 4, back on the bus to head back to Vienna.

That's about as quick a summary of my weekend as I can give. Tomorrow is back to work.

Well it seems that I am getting worse and worse about keeping this blog updated, mostly because things have started to really get busy around here. 2 Weeks ago, we had a week off before the semester of regular classes began here. Many people traveled around Europe a ton (My roommates went to Brussels, Paris, and Amsterdam. Another roommate went to Prague, Krakow, and Budapest), but I actually stayed here in Vienna, hoping to see a lot of the city that I wouldn't normally see and also to get some major work done on learning and recording my music.

Unfortunately, the recording process ended up taking a lot more of my time than I thought it would. It's pretty tough to make recordings, as there is the possibility of playing perfectly. The whole process soon turned into a preoccupation with not making any mistakes. The process was made much longer by the fact that they tuned the piano when I was halfway done with my recordings, and I couldn't have one half of the recording on a tuned piano and another on an untuned piano, so I had to start from scratch. I was able to get recordings that I am pretty happy with though, so that's a bit of a relief.

That week, I was able to see a few really great things around Vienna. For one, I saw the new exhibit on Van Gogh at the Albertina museum. This exhibit is supposed to be one of the most important art exhibits to come here in a long time (they had over 100 van Gogh's) and I really enjoyed the works a ton. I also got to see Brahms's Ein Deutsches Requiem (one of my favorite pieces) performed in Stephansdom (the biggest cathedral in vienna, located right in the center of the city). The performance was pretty good, but since the church is so unbelievably huge, the sound was not clear at all. I'm still glad I got to see it though. I also went to the Cafe Hawelka, which is one of the more famous cafe's in vienna - apparently writers and artists would often meet there. It was very bohemian and smokey, and the coffee was great.

At the end of last week, I went to the Red Bull Flugtag (check out the pictures in my last album uploaded), which was really fun. I think that these events happen all over the world. Basically, people design these things that are supposed to fly (or in some cases, obviously supposed to not fly at all! Look at the picture of the flying Schnitzel). Each team would do a little presentation on the theme of their fake flying machine, and then run it off a giant runway that went into the Donau. Most didn't fly at all.

This last week was the first week of real classes. Here's what I am taking:

German - Same teacher as the one I had for the intensive German course a few weeks ago. I like her a lot and the class is pretty easy and somewhat enjoyable.

Mahler and the Turn of the Century Vienna - This will be a great class. The teacher is so knowledgeable and lectures really well. The readings that we have done so far were also very interesting.

The Music Performance workshop

History of the Hapbsburg Empire - I can't quite tell how this will be yet. It's taught by a teacher form the University of Vienna, so I'm anticipating a much different style of class and evaluation methods. We'll see

Music theory - I just decided to drop this class. It is too easy and, although the teacher is nice, he's a little crazy and said some things that were absolutely not true about the Golden Ratio - a funny story that I don't have patience to type out right now.

Anyway, it's saturday and my parents just got here to visit! I'm really excited to have them here, get to spend some time with them, and show them around my city. I'm sure my dad will post all of the pictures when they get home next week, so I'll be sure to make a link over to those.

Anyway, that's all for now. The weather is starting to get nice here again - it's been cold and rainy for about 2 weeks and now it's getting warmer and clearing up. That's good news for plans with my parents - I've got big plans for tomorrow.

I'm really hoping to update a little more frequently, but as rehearsals, coachings and classes get into the swing of things, it might be harder than it sounds.

I've been pretty terrible about keeping this updated. I promise to try a little harder, though. Here's a quick recap of the last week.

Monday - I saw my first opera at the Wiener Staatoper - Barber of Seville, which was really great. The singers and the musical direction were both fantastic and tickets were only 4 Euros! It is standing room, but you get a great view, it sounds great, and everyone has their own little personal translator (like at the Met).

From Figaro, bike tour on the Insel, Bergpark

From Figaro, bike tour on the Insel, Bergpark

From Figaro, bike tour on the Insel, Bergpark

After the opera, a bunch of my friends and I went to a cafe/bar down the street. It's a really dark, smokey, bohemian sort of establishment where they play the strangest music. I went back again tonight and felt a little out of place wearing my sweater, when half of the people there were either girls with shaved heads or people with multiple piercings.

Tuesday - We took a quick Bike tour of Donauinsel (the island on which the festival last weekend took place). It is enormous and very beautiful, although I think that the time to take advantage of many of the outdoor activities might be passed - it is now about 50 degrees here.

From Figaro, bike tour on the Insel, Bergpark

From Figaro, bike tour on the Insel, Bergpark

After the bike tour, our german class went out to a cafe to learn about all the different kinds of coffee one can order here.

From Figaro, bike tour on the Insel, Bergpark

After class we had a meeting for the Music performance workshop. MPW encompasses lessons, performance classes, coachings etc. and on Tuesday we found out what we were assigned for chamber music. Turns out I got assigned to 5 ensembles!! More than anyone else (except for our 1 violinist). Most people got 2-3 and I really don't think i will have the time to work on 5 pieces in addition to my own rep. Especially considering that I know 2 are very tough and I have no idea how long another one will be. It is kind of an honor that they think I'd be albe to hand that, but the truth is that I can't right now, with all my solo rep, applications, other classes, etc.

I saw this poster and thought it was interesting. This guy is running for president (??) in Austria.

From Figaro, bike tour on the Insel, Bergpark

Can't remember what happened wednesday.

Thursday - We had our Oral Test for the intensive german section of the semester. The test went fine - my friend Billy and I had to talk about the Naschmarkt in a small skit.

Here's my friend Marie with a Wiener Eiskaffee (Viennese Ice-cream Coffee)

From Figaro, bike tour on the Insel, Bergpark

Friday was the written German final which also went fine. Later in the day, I practiced and then went to see Verdi's opera, "La Forza del destino" which was really fantastic. I had conducted the overture for a class a year ago, and it turns out that most of the themes from the opera are in the overture, so I kind of already knew many of the arias. It was a wonderful opera and I'm so glad I went to see it. When i got there, I bumped into two of my friends, Lucy (a clarinetist from Univeristy of Illinois who is traveling every other weekend to Berlin to study with the former principal Clarinetist of the Berlin Phil), and Mike, a cellist who will be in one of my ensembles for the MPW as well as my german class. We went out for Drinks in a bar at the Naschmarkt afterward.

Saturday - Pretty much all I did was practice and made recordings. I really have to get started with these recordings to get most of them out of the way before classes start...

Yesterday I practiced, hung out with most of my roommates, and we watched a bunch of German TV including Family guy and Pimp My ride (Pimpt mein Auto)

Today I made some recordings and had a lesson with Antoinette which went very well. Well I didn't play fantastically, but she had a lot of very insightful things to say about how it could be better. I am really enjoying taking lessons with her (although I did get a name of another teacher, a colleague of Antoinette, for whom I will also try to play for a few times).

Tomorrow is back to the grindstone. I have tons of music to learn, record, and perfect. Bis Später!

Sunday, September 7, 2008

It's been a few days since I last wrote, so I've got to get caught up. Earlier this week I had my meeting with my academic advisor here (basically, he just checks to make sure the classes that I want to register for don't have conflicts). Although I didn't need much guidance with respect to courses, he did encourage me to go sit in on a class at the University of Vienna, because all courses are required by law to be open to the public, apparently. Sounds like a cool idea to me.

On wednesday night, I met up with a group of my friends at an irish pub down the street from one of my friend's apartment. It was a really great time and we were talking about making it a weekly occurrence. I don't know if we will stay as motivated to meet in the middle of the week once classes start, but I'd be really glad if we did. The bar wasn't loud at all and the 2 people staffing the place were really nice. I definitely enjoyed it. Here are some pictures that my friend took that night:





^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^The flash made me look a bit pasty-white in that last one^^^^^^^^^^^^


Since my first lesson with my new teacher, Antoinette von Zabner, I practiced a bunch for a small audition that I had to play yesterday. There is a class here called the Music Performance Workshop, which encompasses a performance class, chamber music, private lessons (or a stipend if you study with a teacher outside the program, as is my case). The audition went so-so, but I'm pretty sure I got in. The main point of the auditions is to find people to match together for chamber groups.

During this whole weekend, Vienna hosted the Donauinselfest (Donau=Danube, insel=island, fest=fest). The Donauinsel is a giant island/park that was built in the middle of the Danube river for recreational use. Every year, there is a humungous music festival (6+ stages, over 500 vendors, 3 million people come) that is entirely free to the public. Well, the food and stuff is not free, but entry is completely free. Over the weekend they had probably over 50 performers and there was so much variety of music. One of the things that I thought was really amazing was the way that bands had such diverse audiences and that people really stayed to listen to music that you wouldn't expect they would enjoy. There was like a 80's metal band who covered Bon Jovi and other scream-y sort of 80's music and there were plenty of people in their 60's and 70's as well as young teenagers all standing in the crowd. There was even a section for kids with rides and things like that. It was pretty amazing. I don't have too many pics but here are some:

From Donauinselfest

From Donauinselfest

From Donauinselfest

From Donauinselfest

From Donauinselfest

This was the band that was covering Bon Jovi - just evidence that there's a bit of New Jersey in everybody. They also played "Rock me Amadeus"

From Donauinselfest

From Donauinselfest

From Donauinselfest

From Donauinselfest

After the audition yesterday, I decided to just wander around the city a bit. I ended up going to get a Schnitzel from a restaurant that is supposed to have the best Wiener Schnitzel in Wien. It was really really good. They brought out a giant Schnitzel that covered the entire plate, literally as big as a medium pizza. But of meat. I walked around a while and saw a random Strasse-Bahn and got on it. I ended up somewhere in the 20th district (somwhere where I probably would never otherwise be. It was great to walk around, not knowing exactly where i was, but somehow I ended up back at the donauinsel (the daytime pictures above). By that time, I had been walking aound for about 3 hours and I was exhausted. I came back home and fell asleep. Later last night I ended up going to this really cool outdoor bar that is right on the donau canal that has this giant fake beach right on the water. I didn't stay too long, but I'd really like to go back an check it out soon.

Today, I found out that there was a piano recital by a pianist whose name had actually been given to me by Dr. Giles named Wolfgang Watzinger. I trekked out to the 18th district this morning and found the house that the concert was in. The recital was very good and I introduced myself to Mr. Watzinger afterward and asked if I could play for him sometime and he told me to call him.

Tonight my roommates and I went to an Indian restaurant that Erica and I went to when we were in Vienna two years ago. It was great, but a little expensive.

Anyway, I've got to do my german homework for tomorrow. Hopefully I'll take some more pictures this week.

Tuesday 2 September, 2008

Just a quick update of what I've been up to, as I'm about to fall asleep. It's not too late here, but I didn't sleep to well last night and I've had a long day.

Saturday is the day of the Flohmarkt, the enormous weekly flee market where you can buy almost anything. I got a 5-cd set from a pianist that I like for 12 euros (I probably should have haggled a bit, but I wasn't sure how accepted that was). More interesting than the actual flee market though, was the aftermath: At 6pm, everyone closed up shop, picked up their tents and left, but many sellers left a TON of junk that they just didn't feel like taking back home with them. This must happen every week, because at 6:00pm SWARMS of people came in and started grabbing whatever they could find - clothes, shoes, printers, glassware, furniture, you name it. It was quite a sight to behold. We should make sure to get there right at 6 next week to get the pick of the litter. Here's some before and after shots (the second is my roomate Sarah collecting some hangers for our apartment left behind).

From First weekend in Vienna

From First weekend in Vienna

Also on Saturday, several of my friends and I went on the IES bus tour around the city. We got to go to some areas of the city that we wouldn't otherwise have seen, especially the Wienerwald (the Vienna woods) which surround the city to the South, West and North. This is the place where Beethoven found much of his inspiration. We stopped on a hilltop which looks over the entire city beautifully. My pictures really don't do too much justice, but here's one:

From First weekend in Vienna

From First weekend in Vienna

Here's the Hundertwasserhaus, an incredible apartment building:

From First weekend in Vienna

and here's the Upper Belvadier, a palace right outside the inner city:

From First weekend in Vienna

That night, i ended up heading back to the Rathaus filmfest to catch an excellent performance of the Berlin Philharmonic with Rattle conducting and Stephen Hough performing in the the Rachmaninoff Variations on a Theme of Paganini. (I also had some delicious chineese food there - I couldn't stop thinking of My Cousin Vinnie when they pull into the town and Marissa Tomei asks "Do you think they've got good Chinese here?")

From First weekend in Vienna

From First weekend in Vienna

On Sunday, My roommates and I headed out to the Alte Donau, a section of the Danube river with lots of outdoor activities (swimming, boating, tennis, volleyball....). It was a beautiful day to be outside and it was a great place to go to relax and get away for the afternoon. It did indicate a little bit about the majority of the people who went there that there was a Defibrillator near to where we parked ourselves on the shore).

From First weekend in Vienna

From First weekend in Vienna

From First weekend in Vienna

Yesterday, I just went to class and practiced. I got some good Gelato and realized that the guy didn't give me enough change back, probably because he thought that I was a stupid American, and told him what's what in German.

Today I had my first lesson with my new teacher. She was fantastic and it went really well. I won't bore you with all of the details about what we worked on, but I really enjoyed it a lot and I'm looking forward to doing some great work throughout the semester.

Now it's 1 and I need to get some sleep. Bis Bald ('till soon)