The Vincent Van Gogh Museum.

Audio: Axel Ruger of the Van Gogh museum on pronouncing Van Gogh.

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Today, many of the musicians walked around the city in the day, following a rehearsal in the morning and a concert at night.

I first was able to secure a spot in a guided tour of the Van Gogh Museum, arranged by The Andy Warhol Museum's ebullient director, Tom Sokolowski, for Pittsburgh Symphony Board members Richard Simmons and his wife Ginny, Jim Wilkenson, Erin Ravenstaal, Shelly Onorato and more from the Allegheny Conference contingent (I didn't quite meet everyone personally). The Warhol museum actually just wrapped up a visiting exhibit called "Other Voices, Other Rooms" in the Stedelijk Museum, which is adjacent to the Van Gogh in the museum district of the city near the Concertgebouw.

Like the Warhol, the Van Gogh doesn't own many of its artist's main paintings, but there are a few choice ones, such as some self-portraits, "The Bedroom," "Sunflowers" (1889) and "The Potato Eaters" (1885). The best part is the contextualization that the museum offers, giving deeper understanding of the artist we often think of as simply crazy. To this point, the first room you enter has five paintings from early in his career, when he painted in a Romantic and realistic manner, to his modern and idiosyncratic paintings.

I loved seeing how the brush strokes got broader with every passing painting in chronological order.

A guided tour helped, of course, and the best part was having the director of the museum explain the different ways in which "Van Gogh" is pronounced around the world.