Vienna Philharmonic New Year’s Concert
Direction: Christian Thielemann. Place and date: Musikverein, Vienna (1/I/2024)
Officially opened this new year with the traditional concert inaugurated in unfortunate times of war in 1939, and now – although distant – overshadowed by unlimited violence in the hands of those who (although it is not their favorite area) should reflect. Barenboim, who was on that podium, recently said it clearly.
And Maestro Thielemann, an already established Berlin personality who will soon assume the direction of the Staat Oper in his city, also expressed himself clearly musically in this concert. His austerity marked the profile of the program and its interpretation, delving into the details of the series of pieces of a generally festive or commemorative nature that he directed.
A good connoisseur of the Vienna Philharmonic, Thielemann assumed a concert whose epicenter, more than the festive expression very present in this already traditional musical celebration, was focused on the praise of the subtle. He showed an architecture of detail that began in the Vienna Bonbons waltz and that was emphasized in the recovered Josef Hellmesberger (Jr.). To encourage the audience, although his display of detail, slow tempo, open language and inner gaze did not make it easy for them, he closed the first part with a fast polka by Eduard Strauss, which preceded a documentary tribute to Bruckner. which culminated with his emotional motet Locus Iste a Deo factus est.
And the taste for subtlety – well underlined on television by the precise play of cameras – advanced in the overture of the operetta Waldmeister in which expression played at the limits of sound.
The perception and work of tempo shone in the polka-mazurka by Eduard Strauss that preceded two displays of pizzicato, the second a “studiantina” by the aforementioned Hellmesberger, which insisted on in-depth detail rather than exuberance. And given the commemoration stimulated by the director of his admired Bruckner (a composer who precisely influences interiority), Thielemann performed a version orchestrated by W. Dörner of an original four-hand piano quadrille by the great composer born in Ansfelden two years ago. centuries.
A happy concert, for lovers of detail, which culminated with the precious luminosity on this occasion of the Blue Danube.
