The Elbphilharmonie goes fresh-air and free

Analeck Kram-Hammerbauer says:

I know it is always unpleasant to book a concert trip without having the tickets in your hand in advance. But you should not worry too much. According to my personal experiences in all those major concert halls on different continents across the globe, I can assure you one thing: the chance that you have to get on your return flight without glimpsing the interior of the Elbphilharmonie is extremely low.

If you are traveling with your loved ones and want nothing but connected seats, then it would of course be much harder. In this case, you have to count on the remaining tickets at the Abendkasse.

Otherwise, if you are just fine with separated seats, then you will almost always have a happy evening. Most importantly, be clever, stay alert and get prepared. Judging from my own observations, most of the people are just too lazy to use their brains. They only wait nearby the ticket counter, use crappy paper with from-the-far-hardly-recognizable handwritten monochrome fonts as their want-ticket signs. If you have an eye-catching “SUCHE KARTE” sign, you already win at the starting line.

Furthermore, you should first study the location and work out your own strategy. Where are the entrances? How do the flows of visitors look like? Where are the earliest convergence points of these flows? Depending on your target seat categories, your potential sellers may either come with public transportation, drive their own cars and park in the underground garage, or just walk from the nearby five-star hotels. Consequently, they all take different routes and maybe even use different entrances. Anyway, the last thing you should do is just staying at a silly place where most of your contenders are also waiting. You should get earlier access to your potential sellers than these people, who, as I said before, are often too lazy to use their brains. Local people tend to prefer selling tickets to the locals, so it is even more important for you to get strategic early access.

In addition, different classes of people will have different arrival time. For example, music lovers would probably be there as soon as the hall is open, because they want to sell their spare tickets as early as possible in order not to miss the pre-concert talk. Meanwhile, wealthy patrons are still drinking champagne with their business partners in the lounge. They don’t really care whether they will find a buyer of the 300+ EUR tickets in their hands. In fact, they are willing to give them out for free, but just don’t have the time to do so. Their time is too precious.

In the unlikely case of not getting any tickets at all, don’t get frustrated. You still have a good chance to save the night. Ask the staffs when the intermission will start, in case there are some world-premiere pieces on the program which prevent you from calculating this decisive parameter with great confidence by yourself. Then find a lovely seaside restaurant nearby and have a relaxed dinner. Go back to the Elbphilharmonie when the intermission begins. Wait for people taking their bags and coats from the cloakroom. Politely ask them if you may have their tickets. In most of the cases, they will just give you the tickets. Remember, there are over 2000 seats in the concert hall. It is impossible that everybody will finish the whole program. Some may suddenly feel uncomfortable, others may be too busy. There are even people who are just too cool to hear the whole concert. Herbert von Karajan was one of them. Once he drove an hour or so in Switzerland to attend a concert conducted by Riccardo Chailly. He drove back home after the first half, not because he didn’t like the concert. He just planned to do so.

At last, let’s talk about the online booking system. Yes, it looks like crazy that every concert will get sold out as soon as the sales start. However, if you go back and check it from time to time, you will occasionally see small quantity of tickets made available again. No concerts are actually sold out. There are tickets reserved for internal staffs, media representatives, sponsors, politicians etc. Once it is confirmed that Ms. X and Mr. Y can not make it, their tickets will be made accessible to the public again. But these tickets will find their buyers extremely quickly, so if you don’t check diligently enough, you may have the impression that it is always sold out.

There is one thing I am not sure though: ticket hotline or internet booking system, which one has priority access to these kind of remaining tickets? What about ticket agents and the official box office, are they really sharing the same ticket pool. I think it really depends on the actual implementation of their ticket system. Maybe some true insiders can share their experiences here.

Good luck and have a memorable trip in Hamburg!