Vienna Phil's New Year's Concert 2013

[Allen]

(Note : 2013, not 2012)

The Vienna Philharmonic’s New Year's Concert 2013 will be conducted by Franz Welser-Möst.

http://www.wienerphilharmoniker.at/inde ... z_news=950

[stenka razin]

Welser-Most's 2013 New Year's concert is well worth waiting for. Thanks for the heads up.

Regards,
Mel

[josé echenique]

Welser-Möst has already conducted the 2011 concert.
Franz Welser-Möst, is the sixth Austrian to conduct the New Year concert, following Clemens Krauss, Josef Krips, Willi Boskovsky, Herbert von Karajan and Nikolaus Harnoncourt.

[rogch]

The concert last year was very good so it is no surprise that they want him to conduct next year as well. He also works with the orchestra on other occasions. He is even music director at the Vienna State Opera. There is a "symbiotic relationship" between the orchestra and the opera according to the VPOs website.

It is a little surprising that he is only the sixth Austrian to conduct the concert. But some conductors have led several concerts and it seems like some foreign conductors are seen as "insiders". Lorin Maazel was even on an Austrian stamp.

[John F]

This year's concert, however, was a downer - for me at least. Under Mariss Jansons the Philharmonic was almost unrecognizable, all brass and percussion, as if the music were Shostakovich and not J. Strauss, and indeed there wasn't much J. Strauss on the program, which was pretty eccentric. The Vienna Choir Boys flatted on their top notes; Julie Andrews spoke so slowly and cautiously that I wondered if she was having a problem reading the teleprompter; the ballet, never a high point of the telecast, was slimmed down (no corps de ballet) and simplified (few leaps on the Belvedere's stone floor), and instead of the State Opera Ballet we saw a pickup outfit calling itself the Vienna City Ballet; and the conductor and orchestra didn't even wish us a happy New Year.

If there's any event in the musical world in which traditions are not only welcome but the whole point of the exercise, it's this concert. Better luck next year.

[rogch]

I agree. It was much better the last time Janssons conducted. The two concerts with Pretre have not impressed me either. Welser-Möst and Barenboim were much better.

[Bösendorfer]

...and the conductor and orchestra didn't even wish us a happy New Year.

They did, though just in German.

Florian

[John F]

Not in the PBS telecast. Traditionally, the opening tremolando of the Blue Danube Waltz brings applause from the audience and a New Year's greeting from the conductor and orchestra, whereupon they play the waltz. This time it didn't happen - or if it did, PBS edited it out, leaving it to Julie Andrews to wish us a happy New Year.

[Chalkperson]

I have always hated the music played at these Concerts, except when Carlos Keiber Conducted them, he made music I dislike immensely seem quite enthralling...to me these Concerts typify everything that is wrong with Classical Music today, why Classical Music needs to change, and why it seems so reluctant to change, change is good...as I have said numerous times, Classical Music lives in the past, it needs also to live in the future if it wants to survive...

[Lance]

It used to be that these VPO New Year's concerts often included some famous soloist or singer. I don't see that happening too much these past years. For me, that was one of the reasons to acquire the disc. I probably shan't acquire the 2013 this time.

[John F]

Not so often, Lance. Apart from Kathleen Battle singing a vocal arrangement of "Frühlingsstimmen" in Karajan's concert, and the Vienna Choir Boys this year in a vocal arrangement of "Feuerfest," I can't think of any other vocal cameos, and apart from Lorin Maazel (and before him, Willi Boskovsky) picking up his violin in this or that number, I don't remember instrumental soloists either. Though that may be just a gap in my memory.

[maestrob]

Not in the PBS telecast. Traditionally, the opening tremolando of the Blue Danube Waltz brings applause from the audience and a New Year's greeting from the conductor and orchestra, whereupon they play the waltz. This time it didn't happen - or if it did, PBS edited it out, leaving it to Julie Andrews to wish us a happy New Year.

Right. I was disappointed in Jansons's conducting as well: he has a habit of shushing the strings especially (and sometimes the whole orchestra) so that there's no body to the sound, and he drags tempi as well. Not my cuppa.

As for Julie Andrews, she was cautious vocally because she is recovering from a major vocal operation where she lost her voice for some length of time: it warmed my heart to see that she did as well as she did, but I suspected that she recorded her narrations one sentence at a time.

[John F]

As for Julie Andrews, she was cautious vocally because she is recovering from a major vocal operation where she lost her voice for some length of time: it warmed my heart to see that she did as well as she did, but I suspected that she recorded her narrations one sentence at a time.

She hosted the 2011 New Year's concert less haltingly than this one, and I've learned from a PBS source that it was probably because she recorded her bits at the last minute, with little time for polishing. Why? Her husband Blake Edwards died just before Christmas 2010, when her segments for 2011 were already taped, and she was on again-off again all year long whether she would do this year's telecast at all.

Though Julie Andrews lost her singing voice in 1997, she's been very active in spoken theatre, film, TV, and recordings since then, and won a Grammy in 2011 for the best spoken word album for children.

[maestrob]

As for Julie Andrews, she was cautious vocally because she is recovering from a major vocal operation where she lost her voice for some length of time: it warmed my heart to see that she did as well as she did, but I suspected that she recorded her narrations one sentence at a time.

She hosted the 2011 New Year's concert less haltingly than this one, and I've learned from a PBS source that it was probably because she recorded her bits at the last minute, with little time for polishing. Why? Her husband Blake Edwards died just before Christmas 2010, when her segments for 2011 were already taped, and she was on again-off again all year long whether she would do this year's telecast at all.

Though Julie Andrews lost her singing voice in 1997, she's been very active in spoken theatre, film, TV, and recordings since then, and won a Grammy in 2011 for the best spoken word album for children.

That said, she did sound like she was fighting a cold.