Day 10: Return to Vienna plus Klosterneuburg

The first part of the day was devoted to our return to Vienna. I had the good fortune just before our departure from Linz to meet with the organist and conductor, Prof. Rupert Frieberger. Prof. Gillesberger has been the producer of an excellent series of CDs includng a Symphony in F Minor, Two different recordings of the Mass No. 1 and a CD devoted to Bruckner's shorter sacred music. The CDs are very difficult to obtain and I picked up a good stock of them and will thus avoid overseas postage costs.

As we traveled past Ansfelden on the Autobahn, there was a stir of activity on the bus as people geared up to take pictures of the church next to Bruckner's birth house.

Just prior to returning to Vienna, we stopped at the small town of Klosterneuburg. Here at the Stift Klosterneuburg, several of Bruckner's early orchestral works were premiered around the centenary of this birth. There is also a plaque on Ratgasse 5 where Bruckner gave piano lessons to the daughters of a wealthy merchant. Since there was no legal place for our bus to stop, the intrepid band of "Bruckner Plaque Paparazzi" made a quick dash for their photos and we were off again!

On a more personal note, once we were back in Vienna, I was also able to visit the offices of the Osterreichische Akademie der Wissenschaften Komission fuer Musikforschung. Here I met Dr. Erich Wolfgang Partsch, who, among other duties, is preparing a Lexikon on Anton Bruckner which should be published next year.