New Year Celebrations - Fireworks on New Year's Eve, Concert on New Year's Day

New Year's Eve was great. Watching the world, but surrounded by friendly family. We are now used to the world timelines. New Year's eve turning into New Year's Day starts in New Zealand, then Australia, then Asia, then Europe, then the UK, then the USA.  

In the UK the crowds are out, despite the cold. One year we had a New Year's Even dinner in a basement bar restaurant in central London. After midnight huge crowds were trying to board trains at the nearby station. The police had set up barriers and were letting people enter the station in a controlled way to prevent a crush.

We went back to our restaurant, hoping they had not thrown away our leftover Champagne. Our was gone, but fortunately they were good enough to give us a free top up from another table's leftover bottle.

The next year we stayed in the suburbs, partying with friends and watching the countdown on their TV. Here is the TV and a member of my family on New Year's Eve 2022, after 2023 is rung in. 

What about New Year's Day? Most years, when in Europe or London, we set an alarm to be sure we are ready to watch it.

New  Year's Day Concert in Vienna, on BBC 2, in Europe in the morning. If you missed it, after an hour or two's delay, I presume whilst they load it up, it's on the iplayer.

Looking back at 2022

Looking forward to 2023

New Year's Resolutions

1 LANGUAGES

My first resolution is to keep on learning languages. With more than 60 lessons, each of up to half a dozen five minute mini-lessons, that takes two to three months per language. I could finish between 2  and 4 languages a year. That is good going. 

I have French and English and Latin from School. I disregard Latin and the made up language Esperanto, as languages not actively spoken in any country as a major language. So I started with English and French. I did Duolingo, German completed, still working on Spanish.

If I can complete Spanish and German and Hebrew in 2023, I shall be up to 5 languages. Add Italian and Portuguese which are close to Spanish and Italian the following year. 

But I have to revise my previous languages in order not to lose them. 

You could do the same. Either work on the opening lessons of several languages out of interest. Or work consistently on one foreign language.

2 TOASTMASTERS

My aim is to become DTM. After a lull whilst I sort out my UK home and finances, I shall return actively to Toastmasters meetings online. If all goes to plan, I shall achieve DTM by doing a project at Writers Summer School with my good friend Carolyn.

3 

Did you miss the New Year's Day Concert, broadcast by the BBC from Vienna?

Problem
My family in Singapore missed their favourite New Year's Day activity, watching the concert from Vienna, Austria, with ballet dancing accompanying the music, pictures of the grand concert hall, an informative commentary on the music, musicians and city, and sometimes a travelogue around Vienna or Austria. Unfortunately, the BBC broadcasts, even if you have paid your license fee in the UK, are not available in outside the UK, as the notice on your screen informs you.

Answer
Fortunately, the concert is available on the iplayer for late watching throughout January. So, if you are returning home to the UK after New Year, or staying with a family in the UK which has BBC iplayer available, you can watch the concert.

Do you really want to watch it? You can find out by watching the brief trailer on YouTube.

We love the concert. The broadcast includes the grand gilded building adorned with flower displays, moments of glamour from the ballet costumes, skill from the dancers. The music is usually upbeat and the happy mood is often accentuated by humour from the conductor interacting with members of the orchestra.

You can re-live or revive your memories of a previous year's event and get a glimpse of the next one as a reminder to put it in your diary to watch it when you get the chance.

Here's the YouTube trailer for the 2017 concert showing the venue and the jollity of the occasion.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5XxX00Bjjzk

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

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.