Salute to Vienna: New Year's Concert 2010
The Music Center at Strathmore
North Bethesda, Maryland
January 2, 2010
by George Jackson
copyright 2010 by George Jackson
Want to welcome New Year the Viennese way by indulging in waltzes and polkas? Chances for doing so have, it seems, increased. Apart from the original New Year's Concert by the Vienna Philharmonic on television, similar performances of light classical music and dance can be experienced live. The foremost presenter of these in America is a Canadian agency, that of the enterprising Attila Glatz. This year its "Salutes" to Viennese tradition are taking place in 14 different cities. 5 distinct road companies are involved and whereas the musicians of all the groups are listed as being part of a single orchestra, The Strauss Symphony of America, the dancers belong to distinct troupes.
Chicago, with its "Salute", has gotten the Vienna City Ballet in David Slobaspyckyj's choreography. In the past, Slobaspyckyj proved he could make clever dances despite relying much on entrances and exits to generate excitement. Three towns in Florida - Clearwater, Sarasota and Fort Myers - are seeing the National Ballet of Hungary in choreography and costumes by Marianna Venekei. Three other Florida locations - Coral Springs, West Palm Beach and Miami - are having the Kiev-Aniko Ballet of Ukraine in choreography and costumes by Aniko Rekhviashvili. Different dancers of this Ukrainian company are performing on the West Coast - in San Diego, Costa Mesa and Los Angeles. Along the MidAtlantic Coast, Vienna Dance Project is in New Brunswick NJ, New York City, Philadelphia and the Washington suburb of North Bethesda MD; choreography and costumes are by Christian Musil, formerly a Vienna Opera dancer and the son of 20th Century stars Irina Borowska and Karl Musil. All of these dance groups are similarly constituted in that they consist of 3 women and 3 men. Every one of the choreographers, I suspect, has to deal with space restrictions because, inevitably, the musicians and their instruments take up much of the stage.
Even at Strathmore with its vast concert platform there was no relief from the lack of room. Dancing was restricted to a long but narrow path along the lip of the stage. Musil simply had to make do. For two polkas by Johann Strauss II he used fewer than his full forces - just one couple for "Im Krapfenwaldl" and two for the "Tritsch-Tratsch". All six dancers - Eva Puletz, Klaudia Baluch, Judith Wansch, Michael Klabouch, Juergen Wagner and Musil - were deployed for two Strauss waltzes - "The Emperor Waltz" and "On the Beautiful Blue Danube" - but not the full group throughout. To some of the encores, the dancers just swayed. Overall, Musil's vocabulary of steps and lifts was varied, yet the effect of the dancing was decorative rather than formal. The best passage came towards the end of "The Emperor Waltz" - a tender duet for Musil and his lady in which movement and music fused and became one.
Dancing behind the dancers was conductor Niels Muus. He also danced when the dancers weren't on stage, riding the music with flair and eliciting nuanced phrasing from the orchestra. Short, portly and bespectacled in a Biedermeier way, Muus was the evening's star and turned the concert into a true celebration. This "Salute" contingent's two singers were Viennese tenor Karl-Michael Ebner and Tokyo-Vienna soprano Akiko Nakajima. She's glamorous but lacks in both her voice and bearing the relaxed manner that's so appealing in operetta. Ebner has it.
Next year Glatz Concerts plans to send a "Salute" to 23 cities across Canada and the USA.
P.S. 2010 Vienna New Year's Day Concert
Great Performances, PBS-TV
The French participation in this year's concert and broadcast must have been intended as an omen of things to come. Later in 2010 two Frenchmen take over the top jobs in Viennese opera and ballet. Dominique Meyer becomes general director of the Staatsoper and Manuel Legris becomes director of the ballet company and dance school shared by the Staatsoper and Volksoper. It is hoped that Legris and Meyer will rescue Viennese ballet from the provincialism of its current Hungarian director, Gyula Harangozo II.
For the telecast, Paris's Georges Pretre conducted the Vienna Philharmonic in a program of waltzes, polkas, marches and dancy overtures drawn mostly from the opus of Johann Strauss II along with the father Strauss 's "Radetzky March". Yet there was, too, the "Champagne Galop" of Copenhagen's Hans Christian Lumbye and music by that immigrant to Paris, Jacques Offenbach (although arranged by Eduard Strauss). The leading dancers were the Paris Opera's Eleonora Abbagnato and Nicolas LeRiche and choreography was by Renato Zanella, a former director of the Vienna Staatsoper' Ballet (when it was still separate from the Volksoper's Ballet).
I didn't mind at all Pretre's purposely understated Viennese pulse. Often on past telecasts there were better "site specific" locations for balletic dancing than this year's - the corridors and stair halls of Vienna's Art History Museum. Zanella's choreography was competent but not nearly as eye-catching as the maneuvers of the pastry chefs at Demel's Imperial and Royal Court Sugar-Bakery which accompanied some of the musical selections. I did mind Valentino's garish gowns for the ladies of the ballet, particularly the red horror that all but hid Abbagnato's stretch and line. Julie Andrews, who replaced the late Walter Cronkite as emcee, could also have used a better designer. And why isn't anyone reviving Grete Wiesenthal's waltz choreography for these events?
