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Nostalgia

New Year's Concert from Vienna
Broadcast on PBS
January 1, 2006

"Salute to Vienna"
Glatz Concerts
Concert Hall, The Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts
Washington, DC, USA
January 2, 2006

by George Jackson
copyright 2006 by George Jackson

Like "The Nutcracker", "The Messiah" and dramatizations of "A Christmas Carol", the New Year's Concert from Vienna is a seasonal favorite. People who attend no other ballet, play or concert all year long, keep going back to these performances year after year for sentiment's sake, often taking younger family members along. The quality of the productions varies, from highly professional to home made, and so does the spirit, from genuine to  ersatz—not that good skills and the right spirit are always matched.  

Three options exist for attending the New Year's Concert. One is to try getting tickets for it live in the elegant, acoustically pristine Musikverein building in Vienna. The second way is to watch it and its bonus features on global television. A third possibility is to take in a copy. I've been following the broadcast version for years. It is the only television program I watch regularly and it has managed to remain remarkably constant without growing stale. The inclusion of women instrumentalists in the Vienna Philharmonic hasn't altered that orchestra's persuasive pulse or joy of tonal discovery. The repertory, restricted as it is to "light" musical classics mostly from the 19th Century, still manages to come up with a sprinkling of novelties. If one becomes accustomed to the gravitas of television host Walter Kronkheit's voice and his way with historical anecdotes, it is possible to learn from his commentary.   

Two or three numbers each year are danced on screen, and it is these that have changed more than other components of the New Year's Concert. The official company chosen to perform the balletic waltzes, polkas, quadrilles etc. was known until recently as the Vienna State-Opera Ballet. This season that ensemble also took over the ballet at Vienna's junior opera house and now bears the cumbersome name Ballet of the Vienna State-Opera and Vienna Volksoper. In the old days, when Gerlinde Dill did the choreography, one wasn't astonished and yet the steps and combinations looked like the audience expected them to look - traditional. Moreover, one could get an idea of how the Viennese were dancing. Gradually, guest stars were added. It was in the context of a televised New Year's Concert from Vienna that Rudolf Nureyev gave one of his final performances. Then guests began to take over both as performers and choreographers. This year John Neumeier made the two dance sequences, both to Johann Strauss II music - a "Pizzicato Polka" trio and a big "You and You" waltz number. Neumeier brought his own soloists from Hamburg (Silvia Azzoni, Alexandre Riabko and Thiago Bordin for the trio; Anna Polikarpova and Ivan Urban as the leading waltz couple) and pushed the Viennese dancers into the background for the waltz. Some of the choreographer's more adventurous movement seemed forced. Ideally, originality in this sort of ballet should follow the musical grain and not push against it. A constant feature of the dance numbers over the years has been site specificity. Brian Large, who directs the photography, shoots them in different locations in Vienna, architecturally interesting places that frequently are off the beaten track. Ballrooms and  grand stairhalls in private palaces meet the public gaze. Most of the choreographers for the New Year's Concerts have used these spaces imaginatively, and so did Neumeier.

If space is a liberating dimension in Vienna, it is a restrictive one for the concert's North American counterpart, "Salute to Vienna". This is an all-live show in which the dancing takes place on a thin strip bordering the lip of the concert platform infront of the seated orchestra. The musicians are the Strauss Symphony of America led by the Vienna-born Sascha Goetzel, who is both conductor and host. They and this year's singers, Budapest-trained soprano Monika Gonzalez and Ukrainian-Austrian tenor Valeriy Serkin, did justice to the light classical music which kept closer than the Viennese production to standard numbers by the Strauss family and Franz Lehar. "Salute" is over ten years old and, zipping across the continent, scores an incredible number of performances at the end of December and beginning of January. This year the dancers appeared four times, in three waltzes  by Johann Strauss II ("Wine, Women and Song", "Vienna Blood" and the finale of "On the Beautiful Blue Danube") plus in one of his polkas ("There's But One Imperial City"). David Slobaspyckyj's choreography served, but on other occasions I've seen more imaginative dances by this Czechoslovakian-born former member of the Vienna State-Opera Ballet. His six size-unmatched performers, under the heading of "Members of the Vienna Opera Ballet", were listed as Judith Rudolf, Radka Slatinska, Sophia Clancy Rowe, Pavel Knolle, Robert Hewitt and Alexander Volny. However, I suspect that Slobaspyckyj, unannounced, substituted for one of the men. The women wore soft slippers for the waltzing, not toe shoes, which disappointed some of the audience. The polka, visualized as a quartet for pastry chefs wielding jars of powdered sugar, was as silly as anything you've ever seen in a deviant "Nutcracker".    

Volume 4, No. 1
January 9, 2006
copyright ©2006 George Jackson
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