Beauty for the eye, and the ear

I have just been enjoying one of my favorite traditions, that of welcoming in the New Year with the Vienna Philharmonic's New Year's Day concert. It is always such a gorgeous melange of music, dance (some of the pieces include performances by members of the Vienna State Ballet), and grand, elegant buildings. Besides the Musikvereinssaal, in which the concert is held, and which features an amazing ceiling of gold, the dancers swirl through rooms and gardens of various palaces and museums to be found in Vienna -- this year it was the Art History Museum. The Musikvereinssaal is filled with flowers, and with people from not only Vienna, but all over the world, who have paid top dollar to attend the most famous and heavily watched concert in the world. And it is so obvious that they are having a grand time, as are the musicians.

The two dances that were featured were enough to satisfy the romanticism buried deep inside every grown woman. In one a lovely, lithe dancer in a red dress was wafting gracefully through pale yellow and gold rooms full of stark Roman and Greek statuary, eventually accompanied by a beautiful young man in white tie and tails. The use of color was inspired: the red against the pale yellow, in striking contrast to the austerity of the white statuary; in shots from above, the two dancers against the black and white mosaic floors. I thought how remarkable it was that here they were whirling and lifting their legs in the way of all ballet dancers, surrounded by priceless art. You would have to practice plenty, to make sure you didn't knock over anything.

Another dance started out with one young dancer in a frothy pink dress, and her young man, again in white tie and tails (and black tights, I eventually realized), pas de deuxing on a landing of the grand stairway. The camera changed angles to reveal a second, then a third couple. Eventually the place was alive with couples, some of the young ladies in the pink, others in a pale grey layered with pink, all of them gliding through the wide, white-painted doorways of gallery after gallery, all in a line, and all lined with great works of art. It was elegant, beautiful, utterly satisfying.

And of course, through it all you are hearing all of this great music, written primarily by various members of the Strauss family. 'though this year there was also a haunting rendition of Jacques Offenbach's Overture to Die Rheinnixen. The concert always finishes up with three encores, one of which is always the On the Beautiful Blue Danube waltz (An der schonen blauen Danau). This year as the orchestra played, television viewers were treated to shots taken along the length of this mighty, historical river, wending its way from Germany, through the Austrian valley of Wachau, with castles on the hills above the river, past Vienna (Vien), past Budapest, Hungary, through Rumania, finally emptying into the Black Sea. For the first time I had a sense of this river as a river, about which Strauss wrote such a melodic and memorable orchestral piece. The opening is so haunting and affecting, I can imagine a native Austrian feeling the tug of home when he's far from home, and he hears it.

I have decided to do something I have been tempted before to do: register for the drawing for next year's concert. The orchestra's web site opens registration between Jan. 2 and Jan. 23, with winners announced in March. Tickets are so in demand, this is how they have to handle it. There are actually three concerts one can attend: the Preview on Dec. 30th, the New Year's Eve concert, and the one on New Year's Day that is televised. I'm going to register for all three, as the program is the same at each. The main thing is to be there, soaking up the music, the ambiance, the sense of tradition...the magic.

Who knows, this time next year I might be in Vienna.