A coaching in Vienna – two Japanese participants with Barna Kobori and Christof Pantillion from the Aron Quartet – one of the leading chamber music ensembles in Austria.

Amateur chamber music players are well catered for with workshops and special courses all over the world, usually from June to late August. Musicians in Europe and North America especially, hold their own intensive workshops where amateur enthusiasts play all day and half the night! 

There are just a few organisations which cater for people who wish to bring non- playing spouses or friends and who wish to explore the place where they stay and only play with coaching sessions three or four hours a day. Listeners are also most welcome and learn from listening to coaching sessions and from discussions with the professional and amateur musicians. Visiting museums and attending concerts and rehearsals is a valuable learning experience for everyone.

One of the attractions of Chamber Music Holidays and Festivals is the wide variety of nationalities among the participants, who come from all over Europe and North America, Australia, Japan and Israel. There is also the opportunity to meet local people – especially members of world famous quartets who join us not only for coaching, but also meals and parties. Lasting friendships are made.

Some people come as pre - formed groups – usually string quartets, and have worked on one or two pieces in advance. With coaching by members of different quartets they gain a wide insight into the music they have studied. This is also interesting for the listeners who see the great variety of rehearsal styles and the different approaches to the same piece of music.

Other people come as individuals and are scheduled in groups, often with four nationalities in one quartet! They bring different ideas to the music and sometimes to the way they rehearse.

The coaches, members of world famous string quartets, vary greatly in their ways of teaching. Many enjoy playing with a group, for example you may find two violinists and a cellist with the violist a coach. Amateur musicians often say how their playing improves with such wonderful players in their midst. Concerts are of course are an important part of any stay and especially when you can attend a concert by a world renowned quartet whose members have coached you – perhaps on the music they are playing.

Other learning experiences come from visiting sites of musical interest – museums and especially places where the great composers lived and worked.

This year the world famous Figaro House in Vienna has been extended and refurbished to become the  Mozarthaus which will open on 27^th January - the 250^th anniversary of Mozart’s birth. Formerly this was just one floor, the apartment where Mozart lived from 1784 to 1787 and wrote The Marriage of Figaro and many other famous works. Now as the Mozarthaus it has been extended to six floors dedicated to the life and music of this great composer with a presentation of his work and life and giving insights into the world of the late Baroque period of Vienna as well as information about his family and the people around him – friends and foes! Several hours of Mozart immersion.

Vienna has many other Museums which attract music lovers. The Haydn House is small but fascinating, this is where the great man died and has much of interest. There is a story that towards the end of Haydn’s life Napoleon’s army was occupying Vienna and a guard was ordered to stand outside Haydn’s home to ensure that he was not disturbed. When Haydn heard about this he picked up his violin, leaned out the window and played the Austria National Anthem (which he had written!), went back to bed and died shortly after. There is a small (just two rooms) Brahms museum in this house which gives some insights into the way this wonderful musician worked.

The most famous Beethoven Museum is in Heiligenstadt where he wrote his tragic Heiligenstadt Testiment. He lived much of his life in and around Vienna and other museums include the Beethoven House in Baden south of Vienna and from there you can visit the Helenental and walk the ‘Beethoven Trail’ along the small river where he so often walked.

There are also museums dedicated to other great composers including  Schubert and Strauss. Two or three hours can happily be spent in the Museum of Musical Instruments in the Hofburg with a fascinating collection from all over the world and from different historic periods.  Other activities which are fascinating for music lovers are guided tours of the world famous State Opera House and the Musikverein and the opportunity to attend rehearsals of famous orchestras.  

Prague, a city of around 1.3 million inhabitants, has three Opera Houses and up to twenty concerts every day. It is possible to visit the National Theatre also the Municipal House with the world famous Smetana Hall, the home of the legendary Czech Philharmonic Orchestra.

There are four main museums of musical interest.

Concert -  A concert in the National Museum in Prague.  The world renowned Stamic Quartet who also coach the participants in Chamber Music Holidays and Festivals.

The Villa America, an enchanting building of the Prague Baroque period is devoted to perhaps the most famous Czech composer, Dvorak, with much of interest about his life and work including his piano, his viola and his desk, scores and photographs. There is a wonderful statue of Smetana, often referred to as the father of Czech music, on the banks of the Vltava River, next to the Smetana Museum which contains scores, letters, musical instruments and other memorabilia.

Villa Bertramka houses an absorbing Mozart Museum. It was here that Mozart stayed with the Dusek family while writing one of his most famous operas, Don Giovanni, finishing the overture just hours before he conducted the first performance in the Estates Theatre in Prague.

The new Czech Museum of Music extends over several floors of a large building in central Prague – it includes the Museum of Musical Instruments with many rare and historic instruments and scores by famous composers such as Haydn.

By combining playing with people from all over the world and coaching by world renowned musicians in Prague and Vienna, with visiting places of musical interest associated with the music they are playing, amateur musicians get a many sided learning experience. For listeners it is fascinating to see how chamber music performances ‘come together’ and how different musicians interpret such music.