Vienna, you very nearly failed me.
I approached you with the same wide-eyed wonder with which I’ve approached the rest of Europe: quivering with anticipation at the thought of having an Authentic Cultural Experience in a city Steeped in History like a well-brewed cup of tea – a classy, temporal tea made of Stately Buildings and the Important People who once inhabited them. Oh, I would imbibe this heady tea, I thought. I would establish a mystical connection with the legendary masters who created the music that has so inspired me all my life. I would enter and inhabit their lofty, artistic world.
Vienna! You tease.
What I got instead was a whole lot of kitsch: bewigged men in velvet breeches handing out glossy pamphlets advertising cotton-candy concerts in gaudy palaces; church cantors with nasal voices, leading quartets instead of choirs; museum exhibits with nothing but facsimiles and gift shops; and Strauss. Oh, the Strauss. And not the good kind, either. Waltzen-Strauss. Vienna, you and I both know that there’s more to you than triple time, treble clef trinkets and musical ties. But where to find it?