Prom 61: Vienna Philharmonic and Andrés Orozco-Estrada 4.09.19

[Barbirollians]

I wonder if the previous night also had some effect on the 'New World' interpretation, because it struck me as fairly spacious and relaxed in feel, where AO-E avoided obvious hard-driving pyrotechnics in his pacing. Good of him to include the 1st movement repeat :) . AO-E did a fine job leading The Noonday Witch at the start as well. Kavakos was peerless, as always, in both the concerto and the encore.

It says something about the timbre of the VPO that in the Josef Strauss encore, hearing the timpani strokes during the first main theme, clearly with hard sticks, immediately put me back in mind of Karajan's 1987 New Year's Concert reading of the same piece, namely that they sounded just the same, and just so. Evidently, though, some in the audience who tried to clap along didn't realize that "Ohne Sorgen!" is not the Strauss family piece to clap along to in the New Year's Concert. Perhaps Barbirollians can confirm if AO-E did his bit to silence the audience then.

Yes he did

[bluestateprommer]

Why shouldn't they clap along to Ohne Sorgen?

Because clapping is completely incompatible with the fast, quicksilver nature and pulse of Ohne Sorgen!. The pulse of clapping blocks interferes with reception of the musical argument; yes, even in a 'light' work such as a Strauss family quick polka (and Ohne Sorgen! is one of the very best of them). With a march like the Radetzky March, or even Stars and Stripes Forever, clapping in march-rhythm fits the pulse of a march just fine. So per Barbirollians, good on A-OE for tamping down the happy clappers there. (And if this seems an overly analytical reaction, or just plain over-reaction, do keep in mind the motto of another great orchestra and its hall: "Res severa verum gaudium".)

To address broadly the points raised by EA (#2) and RF (# 4), part of the issue is that the VPO actually performs very few live orchestral concerts in the Musikverein. So there isn't much of an archive of potential videos to build up. The other factor is that the VPO's concert programs at the Musikverein are, to be honest, crashingly dull in terms of repertoire, with pretty much the same old core repertoire all the time. One can only have so many Beethoven and Brahms symphonies over the years on demand. I also suspect that the income from the New Year's Concert particularly, as well as video presentations like their annual Schonbrunn Palace concert provide reasonable cash flow annually. Or their donor/subscriber base is strong enough that they don't worry about eroding audiences.

Admitted exceptions to the VPO's core repertoire have come from the Da Capo label in Denmark, with recordings of Per Norgard and Rued Langaard symphonies, of all things, to push the VPO out of their comfort zone big time. The contraction of the classical recording industry in general probably also contributes to the reduced presence of the VPO on recordings. We don't have any conductors like Solti, Karajan or Bernstein with popular clout to record/re-record core repertoire commercially.