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VIENNA, Austria -- This city's public musical treasures are dazzling, but its hidden riches are certainly no less memorable.

Tuesday afternoon was a day off for the musicians of the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra, many of whom enjoyed the remarkable art and historical museums and other places open to tourists and local residents.

But a private visit to the Vienna State Opera provided a rare look at materials that usually are locked up out of sight. The orchestra's concertmaster, Andres Cardenes, and his wife, Monique, who is also a violinist, met with Peter Poltun, head of the opera house's music archive.

Poltun is an American whose path to the post he has held for the past 11 years is an example of the way life can be more wondrous than fiction. Originally trained as a French horn player and musicologist, he also studied German.

He knew he didn't want to be a performer, and took a job with the U.S. State Department after graduation. "Naturally, with my background, they sent me to Turkey," he says with the ironic humor that laces his conversation.

Within an hour of arriving in Turkey he received a call from the Istanbul Symphony, hearing, "We have a concert tonight and only two-and-a-half French horns. Can you play with us?"

He did, but the decisive moment of his first station came when he was shot while on duty. Although he declines to discuss the details, he says, "I was sent to Vienna as a reward," he says.

Poltun says what he hated about working for the State Department was having to move everything he and his wife owned every three or four years. He was in Munich when he met Eberhard Wächter, the retired Viennese baritone who was head of the Vienna State Opera. One thing led to another in the conversation, and Poltun was offered his current post.

The visit began in the cafeteria where, over typical Viennese cuisine, we encountered stagehands, dancers and musicians, including violinist Dan Froschauer -- the only member of the Vienna Philharmonic who studied at the Juilliard School of Music in New York City.

Upstairs in his office, Poltun brought out musical artifacts for us to see. He showed us the last writing of Johannes Brahms, a note to his friend and biographer Max Kalbeck. It says, "I won't be over Wednesday. Day by day I go more and more to the dogs." The script is shaky; six days later, he was dead.

The musical riches include first editions of Brahms' Three Violin Sonatas. The composer's manuscripts of these are pieces lost. The First Violin Sonata in G major, for example, was sent to a friend to give to her husband on his birthday. Brahms wrote her, "If this wrapping paper is not satisfactory, return it. I have much more." He was prone to such droll comment. He once described his massive Second Piano Concerto as a trifle.

A first edition of Brahms' Third Symphony had corrections in the composer's musical hand writing.

Many of Ludwig van Beethoven's manuscripts are lost, too. When that is the case, first editions, supervised by the composer, can provide valuable insights. Beethoven once corrected a copyist's work with the note, "What jackass did this?"

Cardenes was able to look at Beethoven's last two violin sonatas, the virtuosic "Kreutzer" and the Sonata No. 10, which is in G major. Cardenes spoke about the links between the Beethoven and Brahms sonatas in the same key, as well as one by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart in G. Brahms often referred in his music to earlier masterpieces he admired. His Clarinet Quintet includes a clear tribute to Mozart's Clarinet Quintet.

Then Poltun unlocked the inner sanctum, where we saw full scores of operas used by many of music's most legendary figures, such as one of "Der Rosenkavalier" used by its composer, Richard Strauss, and Giuseppe Verdi's "Requiem" used by the composer when he conducted it in Vienna. The Strauss was very heavily marked, the Verdi virtually spotless. The earliest score we saw was an 1820 edition of Gioachino Rossini's "The Barber of Seville."

Gustav Mahler is most famous today as a composer, but in his own lifetime he was much more respected as a conductor. He was music director of the Hofoper, which became the Vienna State Opera after World War I. His tenure was a golden era for the institution, although Poltun points out that his predecessor Hans Richter must have been truly great as well, given the admiration with which he was held by the important composers of the Romantic era, such as Brahms, Richard Wagner, Anton Bruckner and others.

Mahler's score of Beethoven's only opera, "Fidelio," is full of fascinating details, as were his markings in Wagner's "Tristan und Isolde." His additions were made in blue pencil in the same style as his markings in a full score of Beethoven's Seventh Symphony in the archive of the New York Philharmonic, where he was music director after leaving Vienna.

Walking past the Musikverin back to the hotel where the Pittsburgh Symphony is staying, Cardenes points out that the value of what we see varies according people beholding them. Musicologists have technical concerns, which recalled the old joke that "musicologists can read music but not hear it." Musicians not only seek clarification of performance issues, but also to feel closer to the spirit of the composers and find inspiration for the emotions they will create for audiences.

A third group has no aesthetic concerns, but see the papers as investment vehicles. Old manuscripts and scores now fetch up to $30,000 to $40,000 apiece -- when they can be found.

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