The Gewandhaus is a large modern concert hall on Augustusplatz in Leipzig, directly opposite the opera house. It is the home of the famous Gewandhaus Orchestra, which also plays regularly at the Thomaskirche (St. Thomas’s Church) and in the opera house itself. The orchestra was founded in 1743, and over Read More …
Prague Castle is on a low hill overlooking the city. It claims to be “the largest coherent castle complex in the world,” with an area of almost 70,000 m². When I was there in 2011 they offered two types of admission tickets, the “long visit” and the “short visit”. I took Read More …
Next door to the Rosenberg Palace is another palace which strictly speaking is not a part of Prague Castle, because it is again (after two interruptions) the private property of the Lobkowicz family, an aristocratic family which has “played a prominent role in Central European history for over six hundred Read More …
The building now known as the Old Kurhaus was built in 1782 as a casino, since Aachen was a fashionable spa at that time and gambling was a major pastime for the rich but bored people who came here to take the waters. The ballroom is now often used for Read More …
The church of Saint-Roch on rue Saint-Honoré is one of the oldest and largest churches in Paris. It is also an attractive venue for chamber music concerts. For several years in the early 21st century the church hosted noontime concerts every Tuesday (except in mid-summer) under the title Les mardi Read More …
Since Giuseppe Verdi once applied to be a student at the Milan Conservatory and was not admitted, it might seem ironic that the Conservatory is now named after him. But actually they turned him down mainly on formal grounds, because he had applied too late and was not a resident Read More …
This modest looking building on the square Largo Gustav Mahler in Milan was originally used as a cinema starting in 1939, but it later stood empty for many years before it was rebuilt as a concert hall, the Auditorium di Milano, which was inaugurated in October 1999. Since then, the Read More …
On summer evenings in July and August the courtyard of the Hôtel de Ville (City Hall) in Geneva’s Old Town is used as an open-air concert venue for classical music, world folk music, French chansons and jazz concerts. These posters near the city hall were announcing two of the concerts Read More …
On Mondays the Arena di Verona stays dark to give all the people who work there a day off. So on the Monday evening when I was there I went to a chamber music concert in the courtyard of the church of San Luca (Chiostro di San Luca Evangelista) on Read More …
When I first moved to Frankfurt in 1970 we lived in a fourth-floor apartment not far from the city center. From our bathroom window we could see the ruins of the old opera house (Alte Oper) with trees growing out of the upper floors. The trees were quite tall by Read More …