Christian Thielemann lifted hearts from the podium of the New Year’s Concert in Vienna yesterday with an interpretation of the famous Blue Danube by Johann Strauss that will remain in the memory. For its extraordinary lyricism and for that exciting dragged-out waltz tempo that has rarely been achieved in the annual rendezvous with classical music for the whole world – it is broadcast in a hundred countries – from the Musikverein in the Austrian capital.
A beautiful Danube that represents a full-fledged defeat of artificial intelligence in the artistic field, since only the organic can appeal to souls in a convulsive world at war. And precisely the German master let it be the music that shook the consciences. Thielemann avoided wishing for a peaceful world and talking about the conflict in Ukraine or the slaughter in Gaza during his brief closing speech. Accused in the past of philonazi, he did not go into details and limited himself to pointing out that “this program leaves the necessary space for everyone to draw their own conclusions: it is varied, melancholy and funny… or maybe not so much”. After that he wished a happy New Year on behalf of the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra.
Just 600 kilometers from Ukraine, the Viennese concert sounded happier than ever yesterday. The ability to create a dreamlike atmosphere in the expected tip of the concert contrasted with the martiality with which Thielemann served most of the polkas and marches in the program. Of course, with the rigor and precision of the fabulous Viennese orchestra: what a human machine! Very beautiful, for example, Johann Strauss’ New Polka Pizzicato or Eduard Strauss’ polka-mazurka El brollador de la montana with which the orchestra took the opportunity to sympathize with the environment and announce that it has donated 100,000 euros to the Association Austrian Alpine…
The concert granted a place of honor to Anton Bruckner on the occasion of his bicentenary. The orchestra and Thielemann, a true specialist in the Viennese composer of Romanticism, agreed to offer for the first time one of his works, the Quadrille for piano four hands in A major WAB 121, with which they made us forget for a moment the a parallel reality in which the Vienna Philharmonic seems to live, which whenever it welcomes the New Year it does so with music from the 19th century that mostly has military themes.
The orchestra also missed another opportunity to show that it does not live out of time when it announced Riccardo Muti as the baton of the 2025 edition instead of betting – finally – on a female conductor. It will be the sixth time that the Italian master has taken on the challenge, and this time he will be 86 years old – in top form -, so there will be no surprises in the most traditional and conservative event of the year.
The 55 million European viewers who followed this ORF production on television will also have been able to appreciate the dance proposal of the Vienna State Opera Ballet, with soloists Ketevan Papava and Eno Peçi in the role of Sissi and Emperor Francis Joseph in the Ischl Waltz, by Johann Strauss son. A perhaps Freudian perspective if you consider that the ballet had been shot in Bad Ischl, where the legendary imperial couple met and which was also the composer’s summer residence for many years: there, where he composed a part considerable of her works, Papava/Sissi now wore a mourning dress by Austrian costume designer Susanne Bisovsky.
The choreographies of the Italian Davide Bombana made me long for the elegant lightness that the Carthaginian José Carlos Martínez, ex of the Paris Opera Ballet and currently its director, managed to convey in this appointment during the pandemic years. Bombana, on the other hand, adds lyricism to the dance. And not even in favor of the martial precision of a classical ballet. Bisovsky’s designs supported an idea of ??men emerging from the Germanic cabaret of a century ago and innocent women emerging from the colorful nineteenth-century campaign. Everything in its place. In that of the new gender traditions.
