Viennese Advent: Advent Concert by the Wiener Symphoniker - Preview

Stephanplatz

1010 Wien

 

A different kind of musical Christmas season in Vienna, but one marked by neighbourly familiarity: Petr Popelka, the Czech chief conductor of the Vienna Symphony Orchestra, brings contemplative and festive music from Bohemia to St. Stephen's Cathedral in Vienna. The Prague-born conductor brings together the orchestra and the Singverein der Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde with a quartet of celebrated vocal soloists from the Czech Republic, who are also well known at the Viennese opera houses, for the Christmas concert.

Together with them and the choir, the Vienna Symphony Orchestra unfolds Baroque splendour with music by the ‘Bohemian Bach’ Jan Dismas Zelenka and solemn sacred music by Dvořák from his ‘Biblical Songs’ and the ‘Gloria’ from his Mass in D major. Vocal romances such as the ‘Lullaby’ from Smetana's opera ‘The Kiss’, the ‘Song to the Moon’ from Dvořák's opera “Rusalka” or one of his ‘Gypsy Melodies’ shine with atmospheric timbres in the Gothic cathedral. ‘Bohemian Christmas’ culminates in the most famous Czech Christmas carol, ‘Narodil se Kristus Pán’, and the originally German Christmas hymn ‘O du fröhliche’, which is popular all over the world.

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(Source: kunstundkultur.com)