Classical Sounds of Austria: Schubert to Salzburg Tour

A 10 day trip to Austria

13 reviews

Choir songs emanate from a palace chapel. Mozart and Schubert’s pieces ring out through evocative opera houses. Houses reminisce of when Beethoven and Haydn composed their scores. Handcrafted for classical music lovers this ten-day tour explores the country that lives and breathes music. Even today it flows from bandstands, cafes and concert halls, a pre-eminent legacy discovered on this luxury overland journey from Vienna to Salzburg. Click here to learn more about Austria tours on Zicasso.

General Information

Photos

Description

Trip Highlights

Listen to choir song in Vienna’s Imperial Palace Chapel
Discover the houses where the world’s greatest composers lived and worked, including Schubert, Johann Strauss, and Haydn
Experience the opera in Mozart’s Salzburg, at a concert in the medieval Hohensalzburg fortress
The house where Beethoven composed is one of the unexpected highlights of a stop in the royal spa city of Baden
Explore the Nibelung lands made famous by Wagner’s operas
Discover Linz, the city of Anton Bruckner, and Eisenstadt, where Haydn made his name and music
Travel back to a time before the music with a day along the Danube River, around Krems and the Wachau Valley
Attend an opera performance at Vienna’s State Opera House, an ode to many of the composers that made Austria the home of classical music
Enjoy so many Austrian delights, like the vineyards of Burgenland and eating pastries in a decorous Viennese cafe

Trip at a Glance

(Day 1): Vienna – An Elegant Hotel and Place in the Capital

(Day 2): Vienna – Houses of the Grand Masters and Evening at the Opera

(Day 3): Vienna – Choir Song, Fine Art Galleries, and Viennese Cafes

(Day 4): Eisenstadt to Lake Neusidle – The World of Joseph Haydn and the Vineyards of Burgenland

(Day 5): Baden to Krems – A Spa Town of Musical Legends

(Day 6): Krems – Before the Music: Discovering Medieval Austria

(Day 7): Linz – Wagner’s Operas Along the Danube and Anton Bruckner’s City

(Day 8): Salzkammergut to Salzburg – Mozart, Strauss and So Many Other Classical Music Memories

(Day 9): Salzburg – A Sound of Music Tour and an Evening Concert

(Day 10): Salzburg to Munich – Departure

Detailed Description

Austria breathes classical music. You hear it in extravagant Viennese cafes, feel it in stately opera houses, sinse it in the houses where operatic scores were composed. This is the country of legends, home to so many that shaped the musical world: Mozart, Johann Strauss, Haydn, Schubert, Wagner, Bruckner; Beethoven isn’t Austrian but composed many of his masterpieces here. Odes to these musicians continue to dominate the atmosphere across the country. It’s perhaps not surprising that a country so vested in classical music continues to play operatic scores above modern compositions. Performances take place everywhere from park bandstands to medieval castles, all part of the evocative cultural climate that’s making Austria so unique to visit.

Handcrafted for classical music lovers or just the curious, this ten-day tour explores the places and people that defined music and culture throughout the centuries. Traveling from Vienna to Salzburg overland, you go in search of the famous notes – like Mozart and Haydn – along with the lesser-known tales that hide behind mountains or shy away from fame. With music as a focal point, you dive into so many other aspects of Austria’s culture, like Vienna’s fine art and cafes, medieval histories along the River Danube, and The Sound of Music popularized by Julie Andrews in Salzburg. Barely a moment goes by without another note, but the itinerary balances music with all those other grand Austrian highlights, notably the majestic European Alps.

Start with three days in Vienna, the first left free, so you can rest and relax in the old capital of the Hapsburgs. Spend day two with the music. You visit Schubert, Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven’s homes, each of their houses contrast the settings where music’s great masters composed their operas. That evening, you feel the music, the State Opera House one of the world’s most enchanting venues. Visit the Imperial Palace Chapel, where the sounds of the Vienna Boy’s Choir reverberate around the walls. The Museum of Fine Arts and a famous Viennese pastry are two more highlights as you fully settle into this private cultural tour.

Travel to Eisenstadt, where a princely dynasty employed Haydn as court composer; from the palace to the composer’s house and mausoleum you take an immersive look at a legend’s history. The surrounding area has superb wine and you spend the night along the lakeshore in Neusidle. Soak into the soothing water of Baden on day five, a famous spa town where Beethoven wrote many of his masterpieces, and Mozart’s Ave Verum Corpus was both inspired and first performed. You’ll visit the small parish church that still hums with those hypnotic organ notes. There’s a delightful old-world hotel in Austria’s oldest city, a little break from the music as you travel the Danube area to discover Austria’s medieval past.

Along the shores of the Danube is the land popularized by Wagner’s operas, various places to explore as you continue to Linz, home of another Austrian heavyweight: Anton Bruckner. He was known as God’s musician and St. Florian Abbey is where he worked endlessly on the music. You’re now in the mountains, vistas all around as the private tour continues through the Salzkammergut Lake District, where the story extends to Brahms, Kalman, Oscar Strauss and Fran Lehar. By the afternoon, you’re in Salzburg, where the music revolved around one name: Mozart. It’s a blissful little city, a corner of Europe that you want to pick up and take back home.

Another musical score made Salzburg famous and even if you are not fond of The Sound of Music, a movie-based tour is a great lens from which to discover the city. So take in the palace and gardens, admire the alpine views, and see the Austria that seems to manifest itself in the imagination. An evening concert at Hohensalzburg Fortress provides a fitting final tribute to this country of classical music, the setting as memorable as the musicians that continue to breathe life into the country. From Salzburg, you will be transferred to Munich for your departure flight, a far shorter transfer than returning to Vienna.

Consider reading about the best Austria tour companies whom we work with.

Detailed Itinerary

Places Visited

Vienna, Theater an der Wien, Schubert Houses, Haydn’s Wohnhaus, Johann Strauss Wohnung, Figarohaus, Pasqualati House, State Opera House, Imperial Palace Chapel, Museum of Fine Arts, Eisenstadt, Burgenland, Esterhazy Palace, Haydn Hall, Hayden Mausoleum, Lake Neusidle, Baden, Melk, Melk Anney, Wachau Valley, River Danube, Durnstein, Krems, Nibelung, Linz, Bruckner House, Alter Dom, St Martin’s Church, St Florian Abbey, Salzburg, Salzkammergut, Bad Ischl, Wolfgang Lake, Mirabel Palace and Garden, Karajan House, Hohensalzburg Fortress

Departure Dates

Dates are flexible and customizable for private departures.

Detailed Itinerary

Day 1: Vienna – An Elegant Hotel and Place in the Capital

Imperial and inimitable, Vienna is the kind of city you expect to see in a movie. The central streets effortlessly transport you to a bygone era, mixing Hapsburg elegance with early Jugendstil. Grand avenues are lined with palaces, but most of the interesting stuff is along the side streets, where everyday townhouses illustrate dedication to fine art and design. Touch down in Vienna and transfer to a hotel in the city’s old urban core. After a brief orientation, the day is at your leisure. There’s so much to soak up on the surrounding streets, so many architectural snippets to admire on the quiet lanes of the Hapsburg capital. The guide can point you towards one of Vienna’s classical cafes, where both music and facade comes from the late 19th century.

What’s Included: airport transfer, accommodation

Day 2: Vienna – Houses of the Grand Masters and Evening at the Opera

Music was forever shaped along Vienna’s streets. So many of the great masters composed here, influencing each other at a time when royalty revered operatic performance. Theater an der Wien is the iconic place to start the day’s tour, an extravagant setting that has housed the premier performance of so many legendary scores (dependent on your travel dates a tour of this theater could be replaced by an evening performance, rather than the scheduled opera at the State Opera House). Even without a note being played, you can sense the otherworldly atmosphere of Theater an der Wien, imagine how the sound would float through what is a relatively small room.

Take a journey through Vienna to see the places where these celebrated compositions were created. Haydn’s Wohnhaus, Mozart’s Figarohaus, Johann Strauss’s Wohning, then Beethoven’s Pasqualati residence, to visit all four is a great way to compare the lives and times of these different figures. Only when explored side-by-side can you pick up on the nuance that ultimately inspired the music. After some downtime back at the hotel, and an early dinner you’re transferred to the State Opera House for an evening performance, where a selection of Austria’s most celebrated pieces are performed.

What’s Included: accommodation, transfer, tour, breakfast

Day 3: Vienna – Choir Song, Fine Art Galleries, and Viennese Cafes

Euphonic voices fill the void, the world famous Vienna Boy’s Choir singing at mass in the Imperial Palace Chapel. The voices mingle then separate, then find their harmony once more as the service continues. Such a performance is emblematic of this capital city; no other city has shown such dedication to elegance and the fine arts. From the chapel, you wander the Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna’s extravagant fine arts museum, where the collection of Flemish and Spanish paintings suggest a royal obsession with buying art. The Hapsburgs brought classical composers to Vienna and hoarded a priceless collection of foreign art, most of it now on display in this museum. As with each day in Vienna, you’ll also stop to enjoy a pastry in one of the city’s cafes, operatic music mingling with local chatter and the espresso machine.