Karlskirche: Vivaldi's Four Seasons Concert

It was a great musical experience. It was cold in Vienna that day, so it was a bit chilly in the church despite the blanket. But as it was only 1 hour it was bearable. When booking tickets, you should perhaps say that they are exchanged for paper at the ticket office. I find that cumbersome and environmentally unnecessary.

The church was very beautiful, but the acoustics were worse than expected. You couldn't see the artists and the instruments were quickly out of tune due to the cold.

Karlkische Concert Kudos to the musicians for their performance and the interiors were absolutely breathtaking! However there are a few things I would have preferred to know in advance, and hence i am also sharing them here: 1. Arrive early to queue up (unless you have reserved seats in Category I): we sat in the back of the cathedral, in the second row of seats in our area. We could barely see the stage, because (i) the seats were arranged to align perfectly with the previous row, (ii) the concert hall was flat, and (iii) some tall people were sitting in front of us. To see the performance we had to constantly lean to find a gap between the people in front - that made my neck so sore. This problem might have been avoided had we arrived earlier to get seated in front, but ultimately I think the organisers should consider rearranging the seats so that each person is seated in the gap between those in the previous row. 2. The acoustics isn't great: obviously it is a cathedral, so it will not be equipped with the acoustic equipment you would expect to find in a concert hall. There is little reverberation (if any), which doesn't do justice to the musicians as the sounds from the instruments were trapped near the front and doesn't transport to the back. 3. Repertoire: the show is advertised as Vivaldi's Four Seasons, but in reality it starts with an unrelated piece performed with a piccolo soloist (?) and in between Spring and Summer is an opera. (I apologise if I get the terminology wrong.) At times it became confusing when the orchestra was going to perform Four Seasons, and it's quite obvious that they were not as familiar with the other pieces (rushing the tempo, intonation was off; though the singing was quite good). Overall the concert still worth attending for seeing the architecture in Karlkische but I would have appreciated if I had known the above points in advance.

Karlskirke is amazing and the musicians were awesome. I liked the organisation and the fact there was a blanket on all chairs.

The passion of the musicians, it was simply a pleasure to be in their presence.