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Friday, January 1, 2016

New Year's Day - concert from Vienna

A chance to see the concert hall in Vienna, hear music from Vienna, and as usual scenes around the city and countryside.

Sit by your TV set or monitor ready to watch the concert always broadcast late morning on New Year's Day. This year, Jan 1st 2016.  Previous year's concerts are available from YouTube and other sources online.

It was on BBC2 at 11.15 am, also on BBC Radio 3 and later on the player. It lasted an hour and a half.

The BBC website has last year's concert highlights (2015).

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes

I just watched it.

You see the inside of the concert hall, flowers in the foreground, gold pillars, the gold statues and cherubs, the audience including a member of the UN.

You can identify different instruments in the orchestra, (see my previous post and next post). The bass players are standing at the back.

The Vienna boys' choir sings.

Recordings played back in the middle show dancers outside. Obviously they have to record these to get summertime shots of the green scenery on a sunny summer day. You can't risk rain or snow or high winds affecting the flights overhead and cameras and dancers' clothes. How the dancers keep their hair in place despite all those pirouettes and turning upside down I would like to know.

We took several screenshots and tried to identify the landmarks. I wish they had told us with subtitles.  We found the Shoenbrunn palace fountain. Other aerial views from an aeroplane took the viewer over  the Danube (also called Danau - depending on your language), as a visual accompaniment to the Blue Danube music. Beside the river are numerous green hillsides, stepped with lines of v i n e s, presumably many being R i e s l  i n g grape variety of the area.

The end musical piece was my favourite, the rousing and rhythmic Radestky march, written by Strauss senior for an ageing general.

Angela Lansbury, travel writer and photographer, author and speaker.

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