Graz New Year's Concert

Philharmonic invited to a poetic journey

Soprano Ekaterina Solunya at the Graz New Year's Concert(Bild: Oper Graz/Oliver Wolf)

An exciting duo for a musical start to the New Year: on the morning of January 1st, it was traditionally the turn of the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra, followed by their colleagues from Graz for their New Year's concert in the evening. This year, under the direction of Johannes Braun, they embarked on a poetic journey between Great Britain and the USA.

The Graz Opera's New Year's Concert is a kind of counterbalance to its big brother in Vienna: instead of waltzing with only a few variables, the Graz Philharmonic Orchestra opts for a new motto and a completely new selection of music every year: Last year, chief conductor Vassilis Christopoulos invited the audience on a champagne-soaked tour of France; this year, his "deputy" Johannes Braun and artistic director Ulrich Lenz as witty presenter took the audience on a journey through the Anglophone world of the 20th century. For his New Year's debut, Braun had only selected works by British and American composers written between 1904 and 1976.

A thirst for action and sentimentality
The journey between the old and new worlds was kicked off on the British east coast - with "Sunday Morning" from Benjamin Britten's "Peter Grimes", which oscillates wonderfully between turbulent energy and indulgent sentimentality.

Johannes Braun conducts the Graz Philharmonic Orchestra(Bild: Oper Graz/Oliver Wolf)

The evening remained true to this poetic oscillation between zest for action and sentimentality throughout the rest of the program - whether the Philharmoniker were swinging heartily through Bernstein's dances from "On The Town" or soprano Ekaterina Solunya was dreaming her way through the aria of Anne Trulove from Stravinsky's "The Rake's Progress", whether mezzo-soprano Anne Brull evoked the stability of democracy in Leonard Bernstein's "Take care of this house" or narrator Will Frost performed Edith Sitwell's tongue-twisting poems with breakneck courage in the excerpts from William Walton's "Facade".

A virtuoso highlight
However, the musical and emotional highlights of the journey were provided by German violin star Rebekka Hartmann with two very different pieces: she shone in the first half of the New Year's concert as the cinematically floating lark in Ralph Vaughn Williams' "The Lark Ascending" and in the second part with the virtuosic, stumbling 3rd movement from Samuel Barber's Violin Concerto op. 14 - in both cases accompanied with wonderful flair by Braun and the Graz Philharmonic Orchestra.

Violin star Rebekka Hartmann(Bild: Oper Graz/Oliver Wolf)

The result: once again, the Graz New Year's Concert was a hit because it didn't (just) focus on the hits of the classical world, but took the audience on a poetic journey. And for all those who don't want to experience New Year's without a waltz, Johannes Braun and the Philharmoniker even unpacked a "British" Strauss waltz as an encore with "Remembrance of Covent Garden": Well done!