Enjoying Viennese residential orchestra: Austria

Everyone asked me to make sure to go and enjoy the orchestra while in Austria so we decided to join our tour group and listen to the Viennese residential orchestra. I am not into orchestras but as they say, when in Rome… so we went with the flow. The bus took us from our hotel and dropped us at the Auersperg Palace.

We attended an evening concert of Mozart and Strauss music presented by the Vienna Residence Orchestra in a beautiful concert room of the Auersperg Palace. The venue was lovely and intimate with beautiful painting, high ceiling and big chandeliers.

It was an evening concert consisting of musicians many with instruments from the 18th century plus an Opera singer and Ballet troupe. The performance included solos and duets by a soprano and a baritone, a male and a female dancer, and a string ensemble.  Most of the musicians looked very young. Me and AS were observing their expressions, they were so into the music.

During the show they got the audience to clap along with the music and some of the ballet scenes were very comic.

Overall, the music was beautiful and professional, but they didn’t provide a program of what they were going to play unless you spent an additional 5 euros for a ‘professional’ program.

We enjoyed the performance immensely and it was absolutely one of the highlights of our trip. The music was mostly Mozart and Johann Strauss.

There was one intermission. During the intermission we were offered a drink of either champagne or orange juice.

We were given a CD from the Vienna Residence Orchestra too.

Here is some samples of what we listened to.