Виена

Vienna is the capital of Austria, and the city the world calls the capital of music. Brought to splendour under the Habsburgs, Vienna greets the visitor with the slogan "Wien ist anders" — Vienna is different — and keeps its promise. Here music is no ornament; it is part of the city's economy: classical concerts alone number around thirty a day, more than many countries offer in a month.

Its orchestras are many, led by the Vienna Philharmonic — an Austrian national treasure and an emblem of classical music itself — the Vienna Symphony and the ORF Radio Symphony Orchestra. Opera houses come in the plural too: the State Opera, the Volksoper and the Theater an der Wien, oldest of the three and a stage of Mozart's own operas, joined by the Kammeroper. The two great concert houses, Musikverein and Konzerthaus, each hold several halls; from the Musikverein's Golden Hall the New Year's Concert goes out to the world — and the Sofia Philharmonic has appeared on that stage, in 2000 and 2019. A Bulgarian thread runs through the Theater in der Josefstadt as well, for which Pancho Vladigerov wrote music more than once.

A city of palaces, museums and hundreds of churches whose concerts rival the great halls, Vienna is also the school of generations of musicians from every continent. Vienna cannot be told; it has to be lived. For a musician, an encounter with it can easily become an obsession, drawing one back time and again.