Golden Hall or Brahms Hall

How the choice works

The hall follows the date. The booking page lists one set of dates for the Golden Hall and another for the Brahms Hall, and the two lists do not overlap, so you cannot pick a room independently of the day. The decision is therefore a matching exercise. If your visit is fixed, you take whichever room your evening falls in. If you are flexible, you can aim for the room you prefer and let the calendar show which of those nights still have seats.

The Golden Hall

English Wikipedia counts the Great Hall, also called the Golden Hall, among the finest concert halls anywhere, and calls it especially suited to classical and romantic music. It is 49 metres long, 19 wide and 18 high, with 1,744 seats and standing room for 300. German Wikipedia adds a ceiling painted with the nine Muses and Apollo. It is the room where the Vienna New Year's Concert is held, and the room that visitors usually have in mind when they picture the house.

The Brahms Hall

The second-largest hall in the building was called the small hall until 1937, when it was renamed for Johannes Brahms. English Wikipedia calls it a Greek Renaissance hall, prized for the greatest chamber ensembles and song recitals, and praises its peacefulness and simple grandeur. German Wikipedia says it was restored in 1993 to its original form, with red columns and green marble walls. It is gentler and more intimate than the Golden Hall, and it is the room for anyone who likes music close up.

Does the sound differ?

Both rooms are built for listening. The Golden Hall's warm, rich and clear sound comes, in Wikipedia's account, from its narrow shoebox shape, its thick plaster walls and its many reflecting and diffusing surfaces, which send sound in strongly from the sides. The Brahms Hall is smaller. You will hear the same programme in either, but you will notice the scale: a bigger room feels grander, a smaller one feels closer. Neither is a lesser room, and the house treats both as concert halls.

What stays the same

Because both halls belong to the same house, the evening around the music does not change. You collect your ticket in the same lobby, check your coat in the same cloakroom and follow the same rules. The only things that change are the room, the number of people in it and, perhaps, how near the stage your category puts you. Everything else on the practical guides applies in either hall.

• The lobby collection point and its opening hour
• The cloakroom, which is mandatory
• The house rules on phones, recordings and applause
• The festive dress code, with no sportswear

Who should chase which

If photographs of gilded balconies and chandeliers are what you saved the trip for, hunt the Golden Hall dates first. If you prefer chamber-scale sound, the Brahms Hall is the more attractive room, not the fallback. If your dates cannot move, stop worrying: you will hear a live orchestra in a historic room either way. Vivaldi nights are set by the programme, so settle the music and the room separately.

• The room from the New Year's broadcasts: the Golden Hall
• A smaller, calmer room: the Brahms Hall
• A fixed evening you cannot move: whichever your date gives you
• Vivaldi's Four Seasons: check the programme for that date, then the hall

If you only want to see the rooms

The house also runs guided tours, in English and German, with tickets sold through its own shop. Tours are not offered on Sundays and public holidays, and a tour can be postponed or cancelled because of rehearsals or technical work, because the building is a working concert venue rather than a museum. A tour shows you the rooms without a concert. It is not a substitute for hearing an orchestra in one of them, but it is the answer if the building matters more than the music.