Gearhart Students Perform in St. Josef's Church Vienna, Austria

Gearhart students Anne Wolfe, Amara Sperber, Christine Senavsky, Michelle Brunader and Melanie Haskins performed wonderfully during Concert I of the Vienna Study Abroad Program. We performed at St. Josef's Church, the church where Schubert's funeral was held. It was a very special evening for all of us. Below are pictures of both the morning rehearsal and the concert.

Here is Michelle in the balcony, performing with the organ.

Porter Trio for 2 Violins and Viola, rehearsal

At the concert

Melanie Haskins with Thomas Waganet and Noah Sylwester.

Heard Hilary Hahn in Vienna!

One of the fantastic many performances we heard in Vienna was of Hilary Hahn. Amara got to pose for a picture!

Gearhart Studio in Salzburg!

Gearhart Violin Class in Salzburg! What a great group of students! What a great day. We visited the Mozart Geburtshaus (birth house) and many other places.

Couldn't help it. I was not going to buy one, unless it had the red coat. OK... I found one with the red coat. Go ducks!

On top of Untersberg!

 How does Colin levitate like that?

Excursion to Fertöd Hungary. Esterhaza!

Getting off the train in Fertöd.

A very small train station, about 1.5 Kilometers from the Palace. We walked at least 1 kilometer the WRONG direction initially. Whoops. We were joking: "There go my student evaluations!"

We finally made it to the Palace. WOW. This is the BACK DOOR if you can believe it.

Couldn't help it. Go Ducks!

Our entire group -- without Noelle :( who is sick and back at the dorm.

Really great sculptures that I loved in the courtyard... killing sea monsters...

We had a tour of the inside. This is the room where Prince Nikolaus played his Baryton -- and the 125 works Haydn wrote for this instrument.

This is the ceiling in the entryway. There were three paintings with FPN, Fürst (Prince) Nikolaus Esterhazy. This painting in the N! Way to impress your guests, Nick.

This is the front door, which you would arrive at after having traveled through the formal gardens.

Picture of the gardens from the 2nd floor window.

If that path looks like it is endless... it practically is. We walked down it. We walked at least 2 Kilometers. This was all landscaped when the prince lived here.

This is a modern sculpture of Haydn in the gardens. Very cute. He's coming to work.

The miles of paths were all lined with trees.

Front of palace from the garden.

We walked for several miles in the rain. Hardcore travelers! We didn't want to miss anything.

This is the musician's quarters, where Haydn lived on the top floor.

Here is the inner courtyard for the musicians.

A cool building we passed on the way back to the train station.

Here we are grabbing dinner at a Hungarian Grocery store before it closed, hiding from the rain. We had salami and chess and bread. Very memorable!

First excursion out of Vienna. To Eisenstadt!

SATURDAY OCTOBER 10th, we traveled a little over an hour by train to the small town of Eisenstadt where we visited several locations connected with Haydn.

I really like the big Vienna Train station! I thought the contemporary architecture was really fantastic.

Arriving in Eisenstadt. A really cute and beautiful little town. We broke up to explore the town by ourselves for a few hours. I went to the Haydn House in Eisenstadt. This was a house he lived in during the middle of his life. (The previous post was the house he had and the end of his life.)

Apparently this was uncovered during a more recent renovation of the house. This is possibly the wall decoration during Haydn's time. It is hand painted. I thought it was really interesting because it was so colorful. We all tend to think of the past as black and white!

There were many facsimiles at the museums we have visited so far. Although interesting, they don't excite me as much as the originals. So here is an original score from the first publication of the Creation from 1800. Right next to it was a score to the Seasons published in 1802. Really fantastic to see.

This is a picture looking down the street from the front of his house. I went in this beautiful little Kirche.

Now we met back together as a group and went to visit the Esterhazy Palace where Haydn worked. (Although not the only one. This coming week we visit ANOTHER!)

Here is the back of the palace. Originally there was a huge private formal garden, which is now a public park.

In the back of the Palace.

Here is the first place we saw: the Haydnsaal. Really, really exciting.

Haydn presented many of his works in this hall.

In the museum in the Palace, we saw a Baryton. I was so excited to see this, because I've always wondered what one looked like. Prince Nikolaus, who Haydn worked for, was really fond of this instrument and learned how to play it. Haydn then wrote 126 Baryton trios for him over several years. The fingerboard is really wide with 6 strings and hard to imagine playing... and also hard to imagine bowing with 6 strings because of the clearance for each individual string. There are strings on the back you can pluck with your thumb, but I couldn't see the back at all in this exhibit. Amazing. Also interesting to think that the Prince was into this really MODERN instrument -- which would be like a someone playing the Trans Trem Harp Guitar. Ever heard of it? Probably not -- because it is a very modern (well, ok... 1980s) that was developed and only a few people (maybe only Michael Hedges) used it.

Group photo at the end of the tour!

We then spit up again. I went to the church where Haydn's remains are. It really is an interesting church. Some of his late Masses were performed here.

The Haydn tomb was really incredible. I have to say, it really almost brought me to tears -- it is so nicely done. I didn't want to appear too much of a sap in front of some students, so I held back the tears. Very, very cool.

Then at the end you could climb up stairs to the top for this view. What a great trip!