The end of German Intensive!

Finally!  A moment of peace as most of the other IESer's head off on the 3 city tour for the next 10 days, I can finally sit down for a much needed blog post!  This week has been full of excitement, emotions, stress, tea, and not enough sleep.  As I sit here with my cup of perfectly made green tea, I'll tell you all about it. :)

 After touring through Salzburg, Lucerne, Luxembourg, Paris, and Dresden, the CSO finally hit Vienna!  That's what I've really been waiting for all this time.  ;)  I couldn't help myself from going to both nights of their concerts here.  The program for the first night was a piece by Rands (if you go to IU, the guy who wrote Vincent), Death and Transfiguration, and Shostakovich's 5th Symphony.  The second night was Hindemith's Symphony in Eb and Prokofiev's Romeo and Juliet.  Both were wonderful concerts, as usual.  The Musikverein is an incrediby beautiful building.  I asked Dale Clevenger how he liked the hall and he said, "It may be the greatest hall in the world."  Need I say more?  It's pretty small, but it's gorgeous.  Chris Martin also told me it was one of his favorites.  As you can see, this is the view of the stage from the Stehplatz (the standing room).

This is the view from the middle of the hall on the side, looking at the standing room.  If you can zoom into the heard of people back there, you can see Ross's hands flailing and Ryan's head in the left hand corner.  The Stehplatz is incredibly crowded and it's first come, first served.  So, we arrived an hour early and got in line outside the building, then they open the building so form a line on the inside before checking tickets (which we picked up ahead of time!).  Then, they check your ticket and you're let up a set of stairs that enters directly to the standing room.  You wait until 30 minutes before the concert, when a buzzer goes off, similar to the ones you might hear at say.. a horse race.. and then everyone sprints to the stehplatz to get the best spot.  Men, women, children, short, tall, young, and even the old, literally run to get a spot on the railing.  I didn't run, so I didn't get a spot on the railing.  However, I'm tall and don't really need one!  Very interesting experience, and for 6 Euros.. totally worth it!

The front of the Musikverein.  Seriously... one of the most gorgeous buildings around.  

While the CSO was in town, I was fortunate enough to get a lesson with Dale Clevenger, the principal horn.   It was a fantastic lesson.  I played a little mozart's 4th horn concerto for him, then he started shuffling through my music and marking (more) correct slurs into my Mozart quintet part. Very Dale-like :)  So, I played a bit of that for him, and he played a bit of it for me.  It was really good to get a lesson, and I haven't had one in a while, and I've also realized that I'm growing.  Instead of becoming flustered at being asked to play something that I hadn't planned on playing, I felt completely confident in playing whatever he asked of me. 

After the lesson, Dale, Blair Sordetto, and I all went out to dinner!  It was so amazing to see Dale and my hometown orchestra in a different hall.  After each concert, a few of us waited outside the "Künstlereingang" (the artist's entrance) and acted like the usual CSO groupies.  We said hi to Michael Mulcahy, Chris Martin, Dave Griffin, Charlie Vernon, Tage Larson, Jim Smelser, Li-Kuo Chang, Charlie Pickler, and of course Dale.  We also saw Pete Ellefson, along for the ride just in case he was needed.  This picture, is of course, my favorite 4th horn player (tied with Sarah Willis hehe), Dave Griffin, who I chatted with for a while and hopefully I'll get a lesson with when I'm back in Chicago!  (If you haven't heard his album, you must!  It's called "For You") 

I also went out with Dale for a preconcert dinner the second night as well, which was just wonderful.  He helped ease me out of my homesickness a little bit more.  He had some very good advice for me and his thoughts are never taken for granted.  I really enjoyed spending time with him and was sad to see him returning to Chicago.  I had to say a heartfelt goodbye to him and the orchestra after the concert on Tuesday.  It was definitely the high point of my week, and a memory I'll hold dearly forever.  

And because it was the high point, nothing else really mattered to me, so I did the bare minimum in my german intensive class!  This made the rest of the week someone difficult, as it was the last week and I had my final today.  It was a very difficult exam, on which I didn't actually know how to do everything.  We'll leave it at that.  GERMAN INTENSIVE IS COMPLETE!!!!!!!  Now is the beginning of break week.  Yayyyyyyyy!!!!!!!

My favorite pic of the week :)

Random occurences of the week:

Ich habe meine Finger geschnitten mit einem Brotmessern! aka.. I cut my finger with a bread knife.  Which was a new experience for me.  It hurt quite a bit and bled for about 20 or so minutes.  For future reference, don't try to cut the wobbly end of a hard loaf of bread.  Schlechte Idee!

I discovered Paprika chips.  They taste similar to BBQ chips.. but better :)  nöm!  I thought I was going to get fat from Nutella... 

I was assigned my horn prof for the semester!  His name is Manuel Huber.  Very excited to meet him!  He is currently on tour with the Wiener Philharmoniker!  He has been with them for 4 years, and as of this past year, he became the new principal horn.  He is VERY young.  Ein Wunderkind.  I sent him an email (in german thank you!) and my first lesson is in a week!  We'll see how it goes...!

I went to the Naschmarkt for the first time today.  It's amazing.  It's essentially an outdoor market.  It's very cheap and amazingly wonderful.  I got some dried apricots and apples, a giant piece of really yummy bread, hummus, falafel, grapes, a cucumber, and an eggplant!  All for very cheap.  They also have a lot of really neat authentic handmade goods, like clothing, purses, scarves, and jewelry.  I have a feeling I'll be spending a lot of time there.

Also, exciting... When I met Dale for a lesson, he brought along CSO photographer, Todd Rosenberg.  He's a really nice guy and I had remembered seeing his name from playing in the Chicago Youth Music Initiative under Dudamel.  He was the photographer for that as well.  So, he took some pics and I just happened to show up on the CSO's tour page :)  check it out!  CSO EUROPE TOUR 2011

I leave you with this picture... b/c it's weird. but I like it.  =P