With their Prater Picnic, the Wiener Symphoniker offer a very special open-air concert to their audience: visitors are invited to pack their picnic basket and enjoy a colourful concert on the Kaiserwiese in the Vienna Prater in front of the spectacular backdrop of the Vienna Giant Ferris Wheel. This year, under the musical direction of Dirk Kaftan, the Wiener Symphoniker, together with soprano Vera-Lotte Boecker and baritone Rafael Fingerlos, embark on a musical journey around the world to mark the 150th anniversary of the Vienna World’s Fair of 1873 – with works by composers of this era from Robert Stolz and George Enescu to George Gershwin, Cole Porter and John Lennon.
Springtime in Vienna 2023
For more than 40 years, “Springtime in Vienna”, the TV Easter Concert of the Wiener Symphoniker, has been a major highlight of Vienna’s musical calendar. Featuring the world’s most in demand soloists, the Wiener Symphoniker celebrate the upcoming spring with a colorful bouquet of lively melodies. This edition features Swiss soprano Regula Mühlemann. Within just a few years, she has established herself as one of the leading sopranos of her generation being acclaimed by audiences and critics alike for her exceptionally beautiful timbre and sensitive performances, most recently “outstanding as a radiant Pamina” (The Telegraph) at the Salzburg Festival. She has received numerous awards and prizes and in 2015, she was finalist of the “Cardiff Singer of the World” Competition.
BBC Proms 2022: Marin Alsop conducts RSO Vienna
Marin Alsop and the Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra are joined by Proms regular and former BBC Radio 3 New Generation Artist Benjamin Grosvenor for Prokofiev’s ferociously demanding Piano Concerto No. 3. ‘My new symphony,’ wrote Dvorák of his Seventh, ‘must … make a stir in the world.’ The result does just that, emerging from a brooding opening into rhapsodic warmth, animated by folk dances and a seemingly endless stream of melodies. This contrasts with the deliciously grotesque episodes of Bartók’s The Miraculous Mandarin suite; and the orchestra and conductor also bring a new work by Viennese composer Hannah Eisendle, having given its world premiere in March 2022. PROGRAM: Bartók: The Miraculous Mandarin – suite 19’; Prokofiev: Piano Concerto No. 3 in C major; Hannah Eisendle: Heliosis 8’; Dvorák: Symphony No. 7 in D minor
New Year‘s Eve Concert 1983
Herbert von Karajan leads the Berliner Philharmoniker in a concert program exploring the idea of homeland. Rossini’s William Tell tells the story of the legendary folk hero whose love for his son led him to confront the menacing Hapsburg invaders. The opera’s overture counts among classical music’s greatest hits. Next Smetana’s unforgettable melodies bring the beautiful Bohemian countryside near the banks of the Moldau river to life in his symphonic cycle “My Homeland” (Má vlast). Finnish composer Jean Sibelius’s Valse triste was originally written as incidental music for his brother-in-law’s play Kuolema (Death). The famed maestro presents an exquisite reading of these works before closing the program with two typically brilliant waltzes by the great Austrian waltz-master Johann Strauss: Delirien and the Overture to Der Zigeunerbaron.