In connection with its “Vienna: City of Dreams” citywide festival this winter, Carnegie Hall will display rare musical artifacts of Beethoven, Mozart, Schubert, Mahler, and Strauss at the Carnegie Hall Rose Museum from February 25 to May 5. The free exhibit—Vienna’s Musical Giants: Treasures from the Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde—includes rare autograph scores and personal items of composers who feature prominently in Vienna’s musical history, including the first sketch for Beethoven’s “Ode to Joy,” juxtaposed with his medicine spoon; the manuscript of Mozart’s Three Duos for Two Wind Instruments K. 487, including a note by the composer, explaining that the works were composed while playing skittles (a precursor to bowling); and Richard Strauss’s lucky horseshoe. The items in the exhibit are on loan from Vienna’s Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde (Society of the Friends of Music); the exhibit represents the first time the items have been publicly displayed in the U.S. “Vienna: City of Dreams,” held from February 21 to March 16, will comprise events at Carnegie Hall and elsewhere in New York City, with 23 partner cultural organizations.
Posted February 14, 2014
