NOVEMBER 2016
With our information on upcoming events in Vienna!
“PAINTERS at work – our goal: to make the Hotel Austria even more attractive for you…!”
All of the corridors are repainted now – from the fourth floor down to the first floor!
Our “man in white,” Mr. Dauti, has finished the walls and ceiling panels now. Moreover, he has applied creative color compositions in the hallways of the individual floors!
Let subtle ornaments extend a warm welcome and be ready to admire many coats of arms of Austrian states in “revived” colors!
The elegant, landmarked windows facing the Wolfengasse received a fresh coat of paint as well and now look the part with their matte silky sheen.
“WINTER BREAK – for our air conditioning systems!”
In the next couple of months, the temperature around the Stephansplatz will not rise beyond the 30° Celsius mark anymore, which means our Mr. Sasa has commenced with servicing our air conditioning systems during the WINTER BREAK…
EVERY SINGLE room unit will be disassembled by him into a total number of 27 (!) parts, checked, cleaned, serviced with love, and of course reassembled after the procedure!
In the meantime, our service team has already exchanged our light and FLUFFY summertime comforters for our light and WARMING wintertime comforters for you!
„DID YOU ACTUALLY KNOW ...“
The choice of restaurants in the vicinity of our hotel is unbeatable. From Viennese fare to Oriental, Asian and Mediterranean cuisine, there are countless choices.
However, should you be looking for a lite bite in between - please take a look at our selection of ready-made frozen dishes! We too, offer a wide selection - typical Austrian dishes, fish dishes, Asian and Italian cuisine are available in this range. Within a few minutes, your meal will be ready and all you need to do is enjoy it.
„Current and upcoming EVENTS in Vienna in November 2016“
Interested in music, theater, the opera, museums, and exhibitions?
We’ll be happy to keep you informed about all the dates / schedules and perhaps even let you in on a few secrets too…
Christmas markets
From the middle of November until Christmas, Vienna's prettiest squares transform into magical Christmas markets. The aroma of Christmas baking and hot punch sets the mood in the run-up to Christmas.
Much at this year's Vienna Christmas World at the Christmas Market is new: A tall arched gateway with candles receives visitors at the entrance to City Hall Square. The 150 or sales booths at the traditional Christmas Market offer Christmas gifts, Christmas tree decorations, handicrafts, culinary treats, confectionery and warming drinks. New lighting is being added to the trees in the surrounding City Hall Park to create a festive sparkle along the Ringstrasse boulevard. This year for the very first time, visitors can skate through the park over two large ice rinks and along numerous paths. They can also go curling next to the 4,000 m² ice rink. Wondrous installations in the park focus on Christmas stories for children. In the Volkshalle at City Hall, the little ones can decorate gingerbread cookies, do crafts and write wish lists to the Christkind.
Not far from here is the Christmas Village on Maria-Theresien-Platz, between the Kunsthistorisches Museum Vienna and the Naturhistorisches Museum Vienna. Over 70 booths offering traditional handicrafts and original gift ideas are set up here during Advent. Gospel choirs and music groups create a pre-Christmas atmosphere. The Christmas Village is replaced by the New Year's Village on 27 December. The romantic Christmas Village in the Altes AKH is also a popular meeting place in the run-up to Christmas, especially for a younger crowd from the neighboring university campus. With a children's railway and an old-fashioned carousel, the Christmas Village in the Altes AKH is also a big hit with families. Two curling lanes are also available.
The Old Viennese Christmas Market on Freyung in the city center is committed to tradition. A Christmas market was held here as early as 1772; today, it is a place to buy handicrafts, glass decorations, traditional mangers and ceramics. Festive Advent music can be heard on the square from 4.00 pm. Top-quality handicrafts can also be purchased a couple of steps further along at the Am Hof Advent Market.
The cultural and Christmas market in front of Schönbrunn Palace offers romance in front of an imperial backdrop, and is converted into a New Year's market after Christmas. The atmospheric market offers traditional handicrafts, hand-made Christmas decorations, Christmas concerts and an extensive children's program, including Christmas workshop. The Christmas Village at Belvedere Palace enjoys an impressive Baroque background. The unique palace gardens provide an ideal site for a tranquil Christmas market with elegant handicrafts and culinary delights.
Art Advent on Karlsplatz offers a diverse children's program and above all handicrafts to buy. Further variety is provided by art installations, show workshops and live bands. There are also numerous stalls full of artisans' wares in the idyllic tiny alleyways at the Christmas Market on Spittelberg and numerous other vendors with unique culinary gift ideas. This year for the first time, there will be a Christmas post office here with its own Spittelberg Christmas stamp.
Entertainment is the word at the Winter Market on Riesenradplatz under the slogan "The Prater rocks". There are children's adventure rides, musical live acts from Gospel to Soul and Pop and a humorous show program here until 8 January. The Christmas Market on Stephansplatz focuses on contemplation and tradition, with 26 booths offering high-quality products from Austria.
Musical Advent
The Christmas atmosphere in Vienna is replete with the sound of festive Advent concerts, cheerful choral singing, captivating Gospel evenings and the star-studded gala "Christmas in Vienna".
Contemplative sounds are promised by the Clemencic Consort in the pre-Christmas Baroque concerts performed on historical instruments at Palais Lobkowitz (16, 17, 18 December). A highlight in the Volksoper year is the Christmas concert, in which everyone participates: from the soloists and the State Ballet to the orchestra and the children's choir (18 December).
The Wiener Konzerthaus stands for variety - which is also reflected during Advent: On 6 December, a big band puts the audience in a Christmas mood with Swinging Christmas. Titles played include Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, Louis Armstrong, Bing Crosby, Glenn Miller and Ella Fitzgerald. The English Baroque Soloists perform sacred works by Johann Sebastian Bach (8 December). And the powerful singers of the Golden Voices of Gospel perform their Tribute to the 19th Century Jubilee Singers, with songs such as "Oh Freedom" and "Deep River" (10 December).
The traditional gala event Christmas in Vienna is also held at the Konzerthaus. The offering of stars this Christmas includes the opera greats Angela Denoke, Vesselina Kasarova, Dmytro Popov and Günter Haumer, with Melissa Venema on trumpet, accompanied by the Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra, the Wiener Singakademie and the Vienna Boys' Choir (16 and 17 December).
Bach's Christmas Oratorio, performed by the Freiburg Baroque Orchestra, is on the program on 22 December. The Bolshoi Don Cossacks give their Christmas concert the following day, on 23 December. Projections add to the atmospheric performance of this large men's choir.
On 5 December, Martin Haselböck's Wiener Akademie perform the Mass in B minor by Johann Sebastian Bach in the famous Golden Hall of the Wiener Musikverein. Handel's Messiah is also performed with a star-studded line-up in the famous hall with its world-famous acoustics (9 December; soloists include: Lucy Crowe and Florian Boesch).
The Federspiel Brass Ensemble presents its modern Christmas program Christmas. Of the slow time in the Glass Hall: It includes arrangements and its own compositions packed with experimental joy (15 December).
Treasures of the Viennese classical period sound particularly festive when played on brass instruments. The soloists of the Wiener KammerOrchester give Advent concerts in St. Stephen's Cathedral: Works by Mozart, Bach, Schubert and Haydn are also performed each weekend in Advent in Vienna's most famous church (25 November - 23 December).
Handel, Vivaldi and more recent Christmas songs such as Winter Wonderland and Blue Christmas are also on the program at the Minorite Church, one of the oldest churches in Vienna, during Trumpets in Concert(10, 15, 17 December). The Original USA Gospel Singers & Band stage their energy-charged Gospel shows here (12-14 and 18-20 December).
There's classical music at Magic Trumpets in Advent at St. Anne's Church, a Baroque jewel in the city center (25 November - 18 December). Bach, Mozart, Haydn and others are also interpreted with trumpet and organ during Christmas Trumpet in the Maltese Church (25 November - 30 December).
The full voices of The Christmas Gospel ensemble ring out in Karlskirche (Church of St. Charles) – with feeling and temperament, they sing classics such as "Oh Happy Day" and "Amazing Grace" as well as modern soul ballads (2, 3, 9, 10, 16, 17 December). Gospel fans take note: Stella Jones and her group of artists give their American Christmas Gospel concerts in the Votive Church (9, 10, 19, 20 December 2016).
Great emphasis is placed on singing in the world's capital of music. About 80 choirs from around the world come to Vienna City Hall on the four weekends in Advent for the International Advent Singing (Fr, Sa, Su, 3.30 pm to 7.00 pm - free admission). The Vienna Boys' Choir is on hand for perfect singing. The choir gives its Christmas program Good Shepherds in its concert hall, the MuTh, to full effect (7, 8, 9, 10, 22 December).
Musical fans make a pilgrimage to the MuseumsQuartier: Scrooge, the successful family musical based on Charles Dickens' Christmas tale, takes to the stage in Halle E from 8 to 11 December. Cool bands perform at Winter in the MQ, and there are daily DJ winter sounds at the ice pavilions with punch bar (4 November - 23 December).
Wien Modern
In 2016, the festival for modern music is being held under the banner "The final questions". From 30 October, a young crowd, regulars and the inquisitive can look forward to 88 events at 21 venues – from St. Stephen's Cathedral to the Central Cemetery.
One of the most important festivals of contemporary music has been held in Vienna for the past 29 years: Wien Modern, founded by Claudio Abbado. Music city Vienna presents its innovative side.
This year, 55 out of the total of 88 events are new works and premieres, but there's also music by the "great-granddaddies" Mahler, Schönberg and Ravel. Whether serious or ironic, melancholic or angry, experimental or simply wonderful, the program is full of contrasts and spans the generations.
Prominent composers are celebrating milestone birthdays and are honored accordingly – such as Friedrich Cerha, György Kurtag, Steve Reich and Sofia Gubaidulina. The performers are right up there with the grand composers: including the Vienna Philharmonic, the Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra, the Klangforum Wien and soloists such as Eva Reiter, Martin Grubinger and Peter Simonischek.
Three spectacular major projects by string quartets offer full performances of all the quartets composed by Birtwistle, Schönberg and Shostakovich. Then there are great orchestral concerts, chamber music, media art, musical theater and more. The best thing to do is go along, listen and be amazed by what New Music sounds like in Vienna.
29th Wien Modern Festival, 30 October - 30 November 2016
21 venues across Vienna, Program, information, tickets:
www.wienmodern.at
Erotic art from Japan
Things get hot at the MAK – Austrian Museum of Applied Arts/Contemporary Art: An exhibition presents unique exhibits of erotic art from Japan.
East Asian "Shunga" (spring paintings) convey a seemingly carefree approach to nakedness and sexuality. The exhibition "SHUNGA. Erotic Art from Japan" at the MAK Design Laboratory shows the artistic quality of the explicitly erotic colored woodcuts, which have become a mass phenomenon despite the lengthy ban imposed by the Japanese government. Single sheets, albums and books by notable masters such as Suzuki Harunobu, Katsushika Hokusai or Kitagawa Utamoro give an insight into this often taboo aspect of Japanese art history.
The exhibition begins with early Shunga series from the 17th century. It ends with selected photographic works by the Japanese artist Nobuyoshi Araki (born 1940), who makes reference to Shunga in a series of nudes. Characteristic features of Shunga are the accuracy of the anatomical detail, occasionally extreme body postures and outsized genitalia.
Note: The exhibition contains explicit erotic illustrations which could offend the moral sensitivity of people under 16 years of age. Access is nevertheless granted.
SHUNGA. Erotic art from Japan, 12 October 2016 - 29 January 2017
www.mak.at
The end of the end
To mark the departure of founding director Dietmar Steiner, the Architecture Center Vienna offers a cross-section through 60 years of international architecture history - together with an outlook for architectural developments in the near future.
Theoreticians have announced the "end of architecture" on a regular basis since the end of the 1950s. And in doing so mostly marked the beginning of a new movement. Using works of Haus-Rucker-Co, Coop Himmelb(l)au, Miroslav Šik, Zaha Hadid, Kisho Kurokawa, Hans Hollein, Herzog & de Meuron, Steven Holl, Johan Otto von Spreckelsen, Paul Andreu and others, the exhibition "At the end: Architecture" shows how many different paths architecture has taken in the past decades.
The focus is not only on movements such as Criticism of Functionalism and Gentle Urban Renewal, New Urbanism and Revision of Modernism, Signature Architecture, the Bottom-Up movement and Global Business, but also on the current field of tension between global large offices and star architects on the one hand and socially committed, historically aware and regionally anchored construction on the other. Beyond that, the show compares foreseeable developments in present-day architecture against the gloomy backdrop of a Los Angeles of the future as prophesied for the year 2019 in the cult film "Blade Runner".
At the end: Architecture. Journeys through time: 1959 – 2019, 6 October 2016 – 20 March 2017
www.azw.at
