Wiener Musikverein
Concert house of 1870 whose Golden Hall hosts the Vienna Philharmonic and the New Year's Concert.
The Musikverein was built for the Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde in Wien on land granted by Emperor Franz Joseph I, and opened on 6 January 1870. The Danish-born architect Theophil Hansen designed it in a Greek Revival manner, with a colonnaded front, caryatids and a strongly coloured interior. The building replaced the society's earlier and much smaller hall and gave Vienna a purpose-built home for orchestral and chamber music at the edge of the new Ringstrasse district.
The Great Hall, widely known as the Golden Hall, holds about 1,700 seated listeners plus standing places and is celebrated for acoustics that arise from its shoebox proportions, wooden floor and richly modelled surfaces. It is the regular home of the Vienna Philharmonic and the setting for the New Year's Concert broadcast worldwide each 1 January. The smaller Brahms Hall serves chamber music and recitals, and four further halls in glass, metal, stone and wood were added underground in 2004.
Highlights
- Greek Revival concert house by Theophil Hansen, opened January 1870
- Golden Hall renowned for its acoustics and gilded caryatids
- Home concert hall of the Vienna Philharmonic
- Brahms Hall for chamber music and four halls added underground in 2004
