On Sunday we explored art museums and walked around all day, ate some very fine meals and visited a biergarten, and wrapped it all up with a classical music concert at the Musikverein (the Music Society, for classical music, but not operas). The Naschmarkt and many restaurants were closed on Sunday but it was a good day for museums.
Our first stop was the Secession Building. In the early years of the 20th century, Gustav Klimt and some like-minded artists and architects had determined that Vienna's art scene was too fossilized and old-fashioned, and dominated by people who were resistant to new artistic ideas. They decided to ""secede" from the art establishment and make their own new artistic world. They built the Secession building (shown here) and welcomed a new avant-garde community of secessionist artists.
Gustav Klimt was one of the founder of the Secession movement, and he remains Vienna's most famous visual artist. He created many famous paintings including The Kiss (shown here) and Judith with the Head of Holofernes, which are on display at the Upper Belvedere art museum; we would be seeing those later in the day. Honestly, everywhere you go in Vienna you see The Kiss on t-shirts and umbrellas and refrigerator magnets - you can't escape it.
But when the movement was young, these artists were rejected. I have to smile thinking that the gang that couldn't get into the galleries and salons frequented by Vienna's high society (and there was no high society higher than Vienna's!) are now the most celebrated artists in Vienna. Their building is gorgeous and it's full of Secessionist art and new art, carrying on the ideas of the founders and steadfastly refusing to become the establishment from which they seceded.
The Secession building is just a few blocks from our hotel and I wanted to see it, both for the building itself but also for the famous and the enormous Beethoven Frieze. The Beethoven Frieze was created for an event marking the 75th anniversary of the death of the great composer. Artistically it was inspired by the composer Richard Wagner's interpretation of the music of the 9th Symphony, all about life and death, virtue and sin, as they've been depicted through the long evolution of human society. It's over 100 feet long and it occupies three sides of a large room. You can spend a lot of time viewing and reflecting upon this work, and we did. Fortunately there are audioguides and printed materials to help out!
We spent more time at the Secession Building than I expected because it was so interesting, but we finally got on with our exploration. We walked past the Karlskirche and along one side of the Schwarzenberg-Garten park complex, eventually stopping at a biergarten for some refreshment. Owen and I had beer and pretzels, but the women had sweets and lemonade. According to Owen it was a perfectly typical biergarten experience, including the way the pretzels were sliced and buttered the way we would a bagel. The service was somewhat neglectful, which apparently is also perfectly typical, at least in the big cities. See also the ashtrays on the table; smoking is permitted, but nobody near us was smoking and I don't recall seeing or smelling any cigarettes at all.
We finally got to the Upper Belvedere art museum. It was crowded but very good. This is where most of the Klimt and other Secessionist painting are, along with other European paintings of the late 19th and 20th centuries. From here we split up and Owen and Brigitte went off exploring on their own while we took a taxi to the biggest art museum in town.
The Kunsthistorisches Art Museum is very big and very grand, a visual spectacle long before you ever get to the artworks hanging on display. It's in the Museumsquartier neighborhood, off the Museumsplatz road, across the Maria-Theresien-Platz park from the natural history museum, and adjacent to the enormous Hofburg, the main Hapsburg government palace and winter residence of the Hapsburg emperors and empresses. Everything here is a monument to Viennese greatness, I felt rather small walking among these magnificent structures. Inside, the museum is beautifully ornate down to the darkest corners, no opportunity was missed to add a little gilt or a tiny painting by a master.
I was most interested in the Italian Renaissance paintings that I would not see in Venice. There were many works by Titian and Veronese, a good number of Caravaggio and Bellini, a Raphael, a few Tintoretto, it was very very good. I was especially happy to see the Caravaggio paintings because there are few or none in Venice.
Two years ago we were in Venice with Owen and Brigitte. Brigitte recommended visiting a specific church to see a specific work by Titian, so we did. As we stood there looking at the canvas, I was acutely aware that I was not getting as much out of it as she was, due to my own ignorance. So in preparation for this trip I had studied carefully about the great Venetian Renaissance painters, and here in Vienna was my first opportunity to see them in person. I got much more out of these works, and I was glad for all that study! Viewing pieces like The Bravo by Titian, shown here, was like a lab practical exam for all of my book-learning.
We stopped for an excellent snack at the museum cafe. Lorna had the classic striped Esterhazy Torte and Melissa had the colorful Mozart Torte. The Esterhazy Torte is a classic of Viennese coffee culture of the same stature as the Sachertorte from last night and the Dobosh Torte that I was still hoping to find. The Mozart Torte is a newer invention and thus lower on my wishlist.
Downstairs the Greek and Roman collections were excellent, and the Egyptian collection was also good but I thought it was poorly arranged. Other Bronze Age artifacts from Mesopotamia were surprisingly weak, and there was nothing from the Americas.
We had five tickets to a 7:30 concert at the Musikverein, so we had to get to dinner at GRND for 6pm. It was incredible! Melissa became addicted to bitter Lemon Soda. Lorna became hooked on Lavender Iced Tea. With all the walking in the warm weather I was drinking quarts of water. The seasonal spargel (asparagus) menu included asparagus soup, grilled marinated asparagus with quark cheese in a cold molded salad, featuring both green and white asparagus. Lorna ordered a trout that came with the head on - she recoiled in protest and the surprised waiter took it away and returned it as a pair of more American-friendly fillets. I had Gerostete liver, Owen had the schnitzel again, Melissa had a delightful asparagus salad, Brigitte had varenyky from their special Ukrainian solidarity menu.
The concert at Musikverein Wien was brilliant! We were on the verge of being late and we had front row seats. The usher had to bump a couple who were in our seats, but there was no trouble. It turned out that our seats were right in front of where the tenor and the soprano sang - there were no better seats in the house! The Warsaw Chamber Orchestra was excellent and the program was all Mozart, much esoterica, including his early unfinished opera Zaide. The Musikverein Wien is widely considered the finest and most beautiful performance hall in Europe, and I must say that I saw nothing to give me any other opinion.
After the show we stumbled upon a cool nearby restaurant called Glasswing. We weren't really hungry after that dinner at GRND, but we'd had such a good time at the concert that we all wanted to talk about it. We got to try some really interesting Austrian specialties, including carrot schnaps!
Austrian schnaps (one p) is a much finer product than the cheap schnapps that we see at home. They take it very seriously and they charge accordingly, but it's worth trying Austrian or Bavarian schnaps if you don't like schnapps.
We also finalized our plan for tomorrow, including two main historical sites, the Schonbrunn Palace and grounds and the Hofburg, described in the next page.