There’s an App for that – Ö1 Radio

Even better than listening to 7 Tage Ö1 on my desktop is listening on my mobile phone! I had trouble carving out time at home to get through last week's Salzburg performance of Giovanna d'Arco. Enter Ö1 iRadio. Now I can listen at home, at work, or on the go!

With the Ö1 iRadio app, I can listen to live programming or to any of the archived performances in 7 Tage Ö1. Finding programs is just a bit more labor intensive than using the web version. But once you're listening, you can browse other streams or read program notes, or check email. 

The only thing I can't do at the same time is take a phone call. Here is the biggest problem: once I pause a stream, the app wants to go back and restart the stream, rather than continue on. To compound that issue, there doesn't seem to be any way to "fast forward" through a program. During GdA, my mobile phone rang (fortunately during the applause at the end of Act 1) and cut off the opera. When I came back to it, the app would only let me start at the beginning again. And as lovely as it was, I really didn't want to hear the entire Prologue and Act 1 over again. I ran into the same issue with the Christian Gerhaher recital. 

That minor issue aside, this is a great addition to my music-listening apps. It's free, so it's hard to argue with minor glitches, and it makes available a lot more wonderful music from Austria.