In Wednesday’s (5/12) Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, Andrew Druckenbrod writes, “The last time the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra performed in Vienna, music director Manfred Honeck found himself in a strange place: among the audience. The performance at the Konzerthaus in early February 2008 was part of a tour the orchestra had arranged years earlier with conductor Marek Janowski at the helm.” This time the orchestra is “in the most prestigious Viennese hall, the Musikverein. ‘It is the Carnegie Hall of Europe,’ said Mr. Honeck. ‘It is a new step for showing our music-making. The orchestra is very well known and respected in Vienna. It is a great thing to be there.’ Soon, the orchestra was invited for not one, but two concerts there. The Musikverein dates are the anchor of a three-week, eight-country, 12-concert European Tour that opens Saturday and touches down in several other major music capitals, including Paris, Prague and Budapest. … The tour will mark the first time Mr. Honeck has conducted in Hungary or Slovenia, and be the first time the PSO has performed in the latter’s capital of Ljubljana since its mammoth, three-month State Department tour of 1964, when the area was part of communist Yugoslavia.”
Posted May 12, 2010
