Munich Philharmonic: Strauss II / Shostakovich / Zimmermann / Ravelfeaturing Nicolas Altstaedt (cello), conducted by Anja Bihlmaier
The Danube Waltz is a Vienna Opera Ball staple, its magically twinkling opening enticing the couples onto the dance floor. Hardly another piece of music epitomises Viennese elegance and the legend of the Austro-Hungarian era quite like The Blue Danube. Anja Bihlmaier contrasts this three-four-time bliss with the dark side of dance, characterised by inner turmoil, bitter mockery and the swan song of an era.
The Danube Waltz is a Vienna Opera Ball staple, its magically twinkling opening enticing the couples onto the dance floor. Hardly another piece of music epitomises Viennese elegance and the legend of the Austro-Hungarian era quite like The Blue Danube. Anja Bihlmaier contrasts this three-four-time bliss with the dark side of dance, characterised by inner turmoil, bitter mockery and the swan song of an era.
In Dmitri Shostakovich’s work, dance exists merely as a shadow. His Cello Concerto No 1 throbs with nervous energy, with grotesquely distorted rhythms that bring to mind marches, circus acts or dance parodies. Bernd Alois Zimmermann takes this idea further in his Musique pour les soupers du Roi Ubu, breaking the dance down into a garish collage of quotations from well-known works: a masked ball of music history. The waltz finally returns with Maurice Ravel’s La valse – a memory, a frenzy, a movement between propriety and ecstasy.
With
- Conductor: Anja Bihlmaier
- Cello: Nicolas Altstaedt
- Munich Philharmonic
Programme
- Johann Strauss II: The Blue Danube, waltz, Op 314
- Dimitri Shostakovich: Cello Concerto No 1 in E-flat major, Op 107
- Bernd Alois Zimmermann: Musique pour les soupers du Roi Ubu
- Maurice Ravel: La Valse, Poème chorégraphique pour orchestre
