First Class Magazine’s Nicole Lenoir-Jourdan sits down with 2MBS Fine Music Sydney’s Bob Gilchrist to talk all things music and travel.

Some people travel. Others arrive. Bob Gilchrist moves through the world like a maestro stepping onto the conductor’s podium, his itineraries mapped not in melodies, his destinations tuned to the frequency of history, elegance, and the unmistakable sound of a champagne cork surrendering to gravity.
Bob is not a man for sightseeing. He does not simply visit Vienna; he hears it, the echoes of Mozart and Beethoven still rustling in the gold-leafed rafters of the Musikverein.
He does not just walk the streets of Santiago de Compostela; he watches incense whirl through cathedral air thick with absolution, a holy spectacle that has been perfuming pilgrims since the Middle Ages. He does not just drink wine in the Barossa; he communes with it, a conversation of Shiraz and time, of oak and patience.

A presenter at 2MBS Fine Music FM, Bob brings his love of classical and jazz traditions into every journey, from grand opera houses to candlelit recital halls, from historic concert stages to back-alley jazz clubs with scuffed floors and stories to tell. Here, then, is his guide to the world’s most musical destinations.
To do Vienna properly, you begin in the Musikverein, home to the Vienna Philharmonic’s New Year’s Concert, a ritual Bob watches religiously each year.
And in Vienna, there is only one place to stay: The Park Hyatt, a former 19th-century bank transformed into a cathedral of luxury, its rooms spacious enough for waltzing, its bar a sanctuary where the night unwinds in neat, golden measures.
Afternoons belong to Café Frauenhuber, the city’s oldest coffeehouse, where Mozart and Beethoven once performed. The Sachertorte here is decadent, the coffee strong enough to restore lost empires, and the peach schnapps, a necessary punctuation to any fine Viennese evening, potent enough to realign the planets.