The Pittsburgh  Symphony European Festivals Tour 2017 ends in Bucharest Romania with two concerts. The first of the two began an hour late with arrival drama owing to a mechanical failure of the charter plane. A police escort down the broad boulevards that lead to the center of the city made for a nail biter […]

The Pittsburgh Symphony moved from London to Lucerne Switzerland through the pristine Zurich airport and a one hour bus ride. Principal Bass Jeff Turner and I called Anna Singer standing in front of the Harrod’s store at Heathrow airport. Jeff has the off kilter folk song bass solo heard in the Mahler First Symphony which […]

The Beatles suggested in A Day in the Life that we now know how many holes it takes to fill the Albert Hall. Albert’s  hall was filled with fans of the Pittsburgh Symphony  September 4 from the prommers standing 800 or more at the front of the stage in the Arena to the seven levels of […]

Moving from Krems Austria to London  was a little wacky for some. I was on the bus with the driver who took a wrong turn right away and wound up using GPS into the Wienerwald following  a switchback of the narrowest steepest kind up and then down into the west side of Vienna. We were […]

The Grafenegg Festival is amazing. Just ten years old, it includes a  beautiful castle on farmland and vineyards with a centuries old family history to the present from the Metternich tree. There is a shop where locally grown wine can be tasted and purchased. There are elegant dining options  inside and out. Picnics and reclining […]

During his lifetime Herbert von Karajan became the most recorded conductor of all time. He helped to design the Salzburg festival large hall working on the plans for the new facility where the Pittsburgh Symphony played starting in 1956. Boxed sets of his recordings and videos are for sale in the gift shop in Salzburg. […]

Michael Cooper in a front page article in the New York Times said Salzburg is the classical music summit, the Davos of the music world. Pittsburgh presented the last of this summer’s programs on Monday August 29 one day after the Berlin Philharmonic said their farewell to Simon Rattle as Music Director. The audience members […]

Wiesbaden is known as one of the oldest “spa towns”  in Europe, famous for its hot springs—at one time, 26 hot springs ran,  14 still flow today.  It’s a casino city too. The Prussians banned gambling in the 19th century but the Casino reopened in 1949.  The Pittsburgh Symphony is a sure bet to appear […]

Inspiring young musicians is one of the many benefits of having a great orchestra. Pittsburgh Symphony violist Marylene Gingras Roy taught our 18 year old college student Jim IV who is off next week to the University of Michigan and his friend Devin Moore, both members of the Pittsburgh Youth Symphony and the Three Rivers […]