Skip to Content, Navigation, or Footer.
The Tufts Daily
Where you read it first | Thursday, March 28, 2024

Tufts Symphony Orchestra performs series of concerts in Austria

2014-02-11-Tufts-Symphony-Orchestra-4EDITED
Director of the Tufts Symphony Orchestra John Page leads a class in the Distler Performance Hall on Feb. 11, 2014.

On the afternoon of Jan. 14, a bus full of Tufts musicians pulled up to the Goldenes Theater Hotel in Salzburg, Austria. I was exhausted after a seven-hour flight, but there was scarcely time for a nap - the Tufts Symphony Orchestra (TSO)tour of Austria was off to a busy start.

Jetlagged and lightheaded, I felt as though I were walking through a dream as we toured the city on foot. The snow-dusted Alps that towered over Salzburg seemed too enormous to be real. The narrow, winding streets were older than anything one could find in Boston. Even in harsh winter, Salzburg was stunning. We walked through the gardens of the Mirabell Palace, which was still breathtaking with dead flowerbeds, leafless trees and grey skies above. As I stood in front of the childhood home of Wolfgang Mozart, I felt as though I were on sacred ground.

The next afternoon, TSO boarded our bus and drove to Hallein, a small medieval town near Salzburg, for our first concert. The venue was too small for an orchestra, but we miraculously fit in the space and still had room for an audience. Despite the untraditionally small size of our venue, we made the best of our circumstances and played a concert featuring works by Mozart and Johannes Brahms“The Unanswered Question” by Charles Ives was a piece that worked particularly well with our unique space. The piece calls for a single trumpeter. Senior Stan Normile played his part from the balcony above the orchestra.

After the first concert, our stay in Salzburg came to an end. We spent the next two days visiting Austrian monasteries and sightseeing in Vienna. My favorite location was the Mozarthaus — one of houses where Mozart lived during his musical career in Vienna. The house was furnished with relics from Mozart’s time, like a wooden chess table from the 18th century. Different documents from Mozart’s life were also displayed, like a student’s exercise sheet with corrections by Mozart scribbled in the margins. Shivers ran down my spine as I realized I was looking at Mozart’s actual handwriting.

Our second concert was in Bad Tatzmannsdorf, a small spa town two hours outside of Vienna. As I entered the lobby of our venue, I was surprised to see several elderly people walking around in bathrobes. This was not a traditional spot — it was a vacation resort for retired Europeans. Once again, the hall that we were playing in was too small, but we managed to squeeze the entire orchestra in front of the audience. While the turnout for this concert was not what one would see at a Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra performance, I am glad that I can now check “play orchestral concert for bathrobe-clad Austrian senior citizens” off my bucket-list.

Our final concert also presented challenges. This was by far our most beautiful venue: a huge, gothic church in Vienna, called the Votivkirche. The church was decorated with vibrant frescoes and had marvelous acoustics. Unfortunately, the only source of heat in the building came from four weak heating lamps. As we shivered at our music stands, we prayed that our instruments would not crack or go out of tune from the freezing temperature.

I was shivering so violently that it was difficult just to hold my violin up. I could barely hit the notes in Austrian composer Johann Strauss’ fast paced “Die Fledermaus” with my numb fingers. Still, I was thankful to play in such a singular, gorgeous venue. I was also grateful for the opportunity to become closer with my fellow musicians. Suffering through the cold together was a great bonding exercise.

After the third concert, a clear pattern had been revealed — each of the locations we played at had been inadequate in some way. John Page, the director of TSO, emailed the tour company that organized the tour to ask why they had booked such problematic venues. In their reply, it was revealed that none of the venues the company had arranged for us to play at had actually been booked due to a lack of follow-through. The tour company scrambled to book backup venues for the orchestra just four days before we were supposed to leave for the tour.

“The plans for venues, ringers and rental instruments were in complete disarray,” Rick Bogin of Plymouth Travel Tours wrote in a statement issued to TSO students and faculty.

Despite this fluke, I consider TSO’s tour of Austria a success. As an orchestra, we became tighter-knit and discovered the rich history of the musical world. These are two gifts that will enhance our performance immensely in concerts to come. TSO’s next concert will be on May 5 at 8:00 p.m. in Distler Performance Hall.