6/20/2009 - Festival Night

Tonight was our final big concert in Vienna, 'A Tale of Two Cities: Honoring the Anniversaries of G. F. Händel & Franz Josef Haydn". This festival concert combined our choir with choirs from Turlock High School in California, Wando High School in South Carolina, the CSU Concert Choir & Community Chorus from Fresno, and the University of Missouri-St. Louis. This was the third combined concert of our trip, and was conducted by Anna Hamre and Hilary Apfeltstadt (accomplished choir conductors). In addition, Camerata Medica Vienna provided accompaniment on strings, trumpet & organ for the combined pieces.

The concert consisted of individual sets by the Turlock High School Madrigals, the University of Missouri-St. Louis; our set was 'Beati quorum via', 'Ave', 'City called Heaven' and 'Elijah Rock'. After the individual sets, Anna Hamre conducted the combined choir in 'Zadok the Priest' by Händel and 'Little Organ Mass (Mass No.5 in B-flat) by Haydn. Then Hilary Apfelstadt conducted the choirs in 'Te Deum in C for Maria Therese' by Haydn and 'Sing unto God from Judas Maccabaeus" by Händel.

However, before that concert we began the day with a tour of the 'House of Music' museum in Vienna, where the interactive & informative musical exhibits kept our kids interested. This was a relatively brief stop, however, as the rest of the day was spent rehearsing for the 8PM concert.

After the concert was over we attended a buffet dinner for all participants, held at Vienna University (former teaching place of Sigmund Freud!)

Below are a selection of snapshots from the day. Here's the Votiv Kirche in Austria, where the concert was held: After dropping the kids for rehearsal, the chaperones headed out for a bite to eat


This is the interior of theVotiv Kirche, before the beginning of the concert. It's enormous, dark and gothic (as befits a gothic cathedral, of course)
Below are some photos taken during the combined choirs performance. As you can see, there are a LOT of people. As you can also see, my little point-and-shoot camera was taxed to the maximum (and then some). Once Don Anderson has uploaded his pictures you should have a much better view.

















This is the size of the cathedral, and the audience as it leaves after the concert:
Here's the University of Vienna site of the buffet dinner, and some more shots of the kids & chaperones enjoying themselves:
















It was a very long and tiring day, but filled with amazing music. Tomorrow I hope to upload some videos & you can see what they looked like.

Goodnight!