The Concertgebouw

This guide to the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam follows Willem Mengelberg, who took the podium in 1895 and built the resident orchestra into one of the world's finest over the next fifty years, with Brahms conducting here and Mahler calling Amsterdam his second musical home. It turns to the night in May 1940 when German forces invaded the Netherlands, and to a toast Mengelberg reportedly raised from an Austrian spa town days later. The hall's acoustics, nearly three seconds of natural reverberation, still rank among the finest in the world.