Russia (bbabo.net), - The New Year 2022 is coming, and with it the main ritual of the musical world - the New Year's Concert of the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra. For the 82nd time it will be held in the Golden Hall of the Society of Friends of Music in Vienna, known throughout the world as the Musikverein. Unlike last year - with the public, albeit with restrictions. Daniel Barenboim is at the console.
For decades, this event is not only musical and secular, but also television. The Austrian public broadcaster ORF, with 16 cameras and specially filmed pre-production films, prepares its most popular production in the world. Thanks to the Russia K TV channel, which will start broadcasting from Vienna at 13:15 Moscow time on January 1, our country will become one of 92 countries in the world, in which about 50 million people will become the most ambitious auditorium of a symphony concert.
A little over a week ago, the Austrian government unexpectedly announced new anti-epidemic restrictions from December 27, according to which more than 1000 people can come to a meeting only if they have already three vaccinations and a fresh PCR test. The Vienna Philharmonic took a couple of days to think it over, and then announced that he had chosen to limit the number of spectators to 1000 people - with two vaccinations and a fresh PCR test. Only the parterre and the boxes of the Golden Hall will be occupied on January 1 by the color of Austrian society and the lucky ones who have come from other countries, and people who with great difficulty received tickets to the balcony and gallery (to get to the New Year's concert, you have to win expensive lottery tickets or pay very large money to resellers), will receive seats at the 2023 New Year's concert.
“Even if these measures pose a particular logistical challenge and require a high degree of understanding and willingness to stand on the part of everyone, we are delighted that this time the New Year's concert can again be held with the public,” said Daniel Froschauer, chairman of the board of the orchestra, who promised to all listeners losing their tickets, an immediate reservation for the next New Year's concert.
Daniel Barenboim, a bright, beloved artist, who has been entrusted with the musical direction of the New Year's concert for the third time, will be behind the console this year. Back in 1965, the famous musician performed for the first time with the Vienna Philharmonic as a pianist, and since 1989 he has regularly conducted this world-renowned orchestra, including at New Year's concerts in 2009 and 2014.
The program of the New Year's Concert always consists mainly of waltzes, polches and marches of composers of the Strauss family and some of their contemporaries, but differs from year to year in specially sought out "zest". This time, the program, which is carefully drafted jointly by the chairman of the board of the orchestra, its director and the guest conductor for this year, will open the not-so-famous "Phoenix" march by Joseph Strauss (named after the carriage company), and will end, as usual, " The Radetzky March "by Johann Strauss - his son (written in honor of the suppression of the Radetzky uprising by the troops of Field Marshal in Italy in 1848, this music became a pervasive metaphor for one of the main works of Austrian literature - the novel of the same name by Joseph Roth about the end of the Austro-Hungarian Empire). The works of Joseph Hellmesberger Jr. (1855-1907) and Karl Michael Zierer (1843-1922) will be performed as rarities. Six out of eighteen pieces - for the first time in the program of the New Year's concert. And it only seems that "light" music is easy to play - Barenboim, for example, conducts five rehearsals for the concert.
Initially, the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra - a special cooperative of musicians of the Vienna Opera Orchestra, founded in 1842 and acting according to its own internal rules - was very lenient with the "entertainment" music of the Strauss and did not perform it in their philharmonic concerts. At the end of the 19th century, it was possible to break through this "blockade" only sporadically. Everything changed in the 1920s, when first Artur Nikisch and then Felix von Weingartner began to include waltzes and polkas in their philharmonic programs. Finally, from 1929 to 1933, Clemens Kraus began to perform a whole concert of Strauss music every year at the Salzburg Festival, of which the Vienna Philharmonic is a permanent orchestra. The first New Year's concerts in Vienna took place, as they write on the band's website, "in a dark period in the history of Austria and the orchestra" - that is, when the Vienna Philharmonic was one of the most revered cultural institutions of the Third Reich, some musicians were expelled, while others were proud of their membership in the Nazi party. It was Clemens Kraus who performed on December 31, 1939, a concert of waltzes and Strauss polkeys.However, such difficult circumstances did not prevent the continuation of the tradition in the post-war years - first in the Allied-controlled, and then in the sovereign new democratic Austrian Republic. After serving a two-year ban on running the orchestra, Kraus returned to conducting the New Year's Concert in 1948 and continued to conduct the business until his death in 1954. For the next 25 years, the concert was directed by Willie Boskovsky, a Strauss-style conductor with a violin in hand. The concert's real world fame stemmed from the fact that from 1980 to 1986 it was directed by the world-renowned American conductor Lorin Maazel. And since 1987, they switched to the practice of inviting a special conductor every year. Although some - like, for example, Daniel Barenboim - this honor falls several times.
It remains to be noted that with the same program as on the morning of January 1, the orchestra performs on the evening of December 31, and for this concert it is usually easier - and not so expensive - to get tickets. And the hall has already been decorated with thousands of flowers, arranged by the best Viennese florists. The TV people are pre-recording for the main broadcast, which will go to the whole world the next morning. This broadcast is essentially the country's main showcase. The TV version of the concert will include a dance performed by the Vienna State Ballet directed by its artistic director Martin Schlepfer to the music of the waltz by Johann Strauss - son of 1001 Nights and a polka, which will be "danced" by the horses of the famous Viennese Spanish Riding School. The costumes are by Austrian designer Arthur Abresser, according to a press release. And during the intermission of the concert, the audience will see a beautiful film by director Georg Rihi about the Austrian UNESCO World Heritage Sites.
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