New Year's Day Concert On TV From Vienna

Photo from Wikipedia, by Welleschik, Creative Commons.

Problem
How do you get to see the New Year's Day Concert In Vienna - when you are not in Vienna and the tickets are very expensive?

Answer
You watch on TV in London, England, or in America. By 2015 it had been broadcast in 90 countries!

Stories
This year as in previous years we watched the concert from Vienna on a large screen TV in London, England. I made notes throughout.

Translation
We looked up on the internet the names of the musical pieces played to translate them. The piece called Pique Dame is French for the playing card the Queen of Spades.
I am learning Italian, the language of music, and German, the language of Vienna. The music of the Strauss family is always a feature of concerts from Vienna on New Year's Day. I note that Johann has a double N, Strauss a double s, written the German way like a large cubby capital B. Sohn, meaning son, like the English has only one n.

Musical Instruments
We also the features of various musical instruments. The violins were orange and yellow. We have a friend who makes violins to order.

The Conductor
The Vienna Philharmonic members get to choose their conductor. This year it was a jolly Venezuelan. He was a delight to watch. He smiled throughout, and conducted with his whole body. He twitched his pencil size baton, flicked his fingers, bowed, bounced on his heels. His knees went up and down. He conducted not just with his arms, but his eyes and eyebrows. The conductor wears a tail coat.

The Building and Decoration
The camera work is impressive. You hardly see a camera, yet they show the building from all angles, the audience, the players in close-up, and slow panoramas. The camera focuses on a painted ceiling cupid blowing on a musical instrument.

The brown pillars look like Greek ionic columns, fluted, with gold spiral caps. Along the sides of the hall are gold statues.

At the far end are the massive pipes of the organ, three banks of pipes. My family's university days friend who was a music student learned to play the organ. He told us that organ tubes on display in matching lengths are there for purely visual appeal. Behind them are the real organ pipes, always different lengths. You would not bother having two the same length making the same sound.

The ceiling is also gold or gilt, with oblong paintings of red or green figures against a sky blue background. Bell shaped chandeliers hang from the ceiling.

I marvel at the amount of time they must spend cleaning, polishing, changing light bulbs and removing spiders' webs. I've been in restaurants with crumbs in corners, and disgusting dirt. Also cathedrals with chipped doors, scratched pews, crumbling woodwork and peeling paint. Here everything is sparkling and shining, glowing and glistening.

Flowers
Banks of flowers add colours, pink and green flamingo flowers, white heart shaped flowers. How many? Thirty thousand blooms, the well-briefed commentator told us. Mixed in with the flowers were lemons, a pineapple and other fruit.

The Dancing
The costumes are lovely, each pair colour co-ordinated. You can watch this year's dancing. At the end the show includes glimpses of previous years.
A video shows dancing in another building. Then the dancers in a subsequent dance run into the concert hall, up and down the aisles, causing the audience to turn their heads.

The Horses
If you are going grey-haired, don't worry. The famous horses you will see start off dark brown or black, as you can see from the foals.

The horses' hair turns white later, gradually. Even if you are not a horse lover, you will be entranced by their swishing, dancing white tails. You see the horses galloping through greenery. Then in a magnificent white building.

The Instruments
The clarinets are superior to one owned by a member of my family. The orchestra players' clarinets have an extra note, bridging the gap between the two octaves.

The violins are orange and yellow, different woods and varnishes.

A tubular bell sounds like a church bell when hit by a hand held hammer.

The harp was painted gold. What colour is it normally? I think I have seen white. A Welsh harpist in Wales told me that the gold ones are much more expensive. So are the ones with coloured strings, which make the harp easier to play.

The Music
The Blue Danube was described as the unofficial national anthem of Austria, always played at the concerts on New Year's Day.
Radetsky March
The concert finished with my favourite, the Radestsky March. You can sing along to it, duddle-um, duddle um, duddle um dum dum. It was written for a military man of that name.

The Composers
The Strauss musical family produced a father and son with the name, rather confusingly. Not so well known is the younger brother, Eduard Strauss.

Translations
The Blue Danube translated into German is An der schönen blauen Donau. Blue is blau. Blauen is the adjective matching the noun, the name of the river, I presume.

Tips
Set your alarm for the concert on January 1st. If you can't record it, you can see it on the iplayer.
It is also on radio but the TV version is much better because you get to see the ballet and the magnificent concert hall.
To get tickets for next year, you have to register a year ahead!

Watch on:
IPlayer.
BBC 4 at 7 pm.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vienna_New_Year's_Concert

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