New Years Day Concert/ Vienna
My favourite ritual on New Years Day is the annual concert in Vienna.
Tickets are gold dust- all the more this year as because of the pandemic the audience in the Golden Hall was limited to 1,000.
The concert honoured Daniel Barenboim who was conducting the Vienna Philharmonic.
He is 80 now and I suppose it was a benefit performance but the orchestra would know well the Strauss family compositions of Polkas and marches.
It is a wonderful visual and musical experience.
As well as the magnificent Golden Hall, you see images of the Schonbrunn Palace and Spanish Riding School.
I have visited Vienna just the once – 6 years ago.
It’s a formal city that survived a tough occupation by the Russians in 1945 and an Allied one after that, reflected in that fine film The Third Man.
You can still appreciate the fine buildings from its glory days as the capital of the Habsburg Empire which once stretched from Turkey in the East to Holland in the west.
As the series Vienna Blood shows, at the turn of the century it had was an intellectual and artistic crucible which flourished but post-World War Two its role in the Anschluss and reluctance to pay any reparations plus a chancellor Kurt Waldheim, who turned out to have been a SS officer, it has had a bad press.
The concert had helped to revive its reputation.
Once again it has had to deal with setbacks as the orchestra had to test daily and the audience were obliged to be double vaccinated and wear masks.
The orchestra follow the formality of the city attired in black jackets and striped trousers. Music can and does have a remedial quality.
See here for a link to an extract – courtesy of – YOUTUBE
During the Second World War the Director of the National Gallery Kenneth Clark put on concerts by pianist Myra Hess.
In the conflict in Sarajevo the cellist Vedran Smailovic played the Albernoni Cello piece in a bread queue that had been bombed with many casualties.
Various rock musicians including George Harrison and Bob Geldorf have organised relief concerts.
There is therefore something both reassuring and enjoyable that a fine orchestra and accomplished musician to conduct them grace our New Years Day.
I must admit that when they played their traditional finale of the Razetsky March I was clapping along with the audience.
