Bumblebees and Firecrackers

After a highly satisfactory Eve I went to sleep presumably before 3 a.m. and finally woke up again when the New Year's Concert of the Vienna Philharmonic began on television, directed by Georges Prêtre. This time I'm too lazy to fact-check the details so half of the following may be invented.

The first part of the concert was "played straight" where the artistic direction was concerned, so we just saw the orchestra and audience and interior of the Wiener Musikverein, and no theatrics or splashy landscapery. Amongst the gimmickry this year there were instruments that mimicked the cuckoo and the duck; and though once a wooden block was used to impersonate the popping of a champagne cork, the second time there was even a special apparatus that, as far as one could tell given the rapid cuts between the camera angles, could spit out a cork as sonorously as the traditional bottle. The audience included the Austrian president Heinz Fischer with spouse (didn't know of or recognize him; the ORF narrator pointed him out), Roger Moore, kimono'd Japanese ladies, and someone who looked suspiciously like our dear finance minister Wolfgang Schäuble.

As for the floral decorations, I approved of them this year: yellow and orange and white roses, red anthuriums (they could have been uglier), ranunculus that was reddish at the edges and yellowish and greenish in the middle, pearly white tulips reminiscent of a Dutch still life, orange lilies, siblings of the ox-eye daisy, etc. The greatest botanical monstrosity was an extraterrestrial-looking lifeform which in terrestrial terms can be described as a cross between a Chinese lantern, hairy gooseberry, and the abdomen of a seasick bumblebee.

During the intermission there was a "making of" documentary, which instead of narration had a soundtrack with passages from Tchaikovsky's Nutcracker, an orchestral version of Mozart's Rondo alla turca, etc. (Of course we enjoyed naming the tune.) A cleaning lady dusted the caryatids, which truly gleamed; a violinist applied a cake of black rosin to his bow; the conductor scribbled notes on scores at a covered Bösendorfer piano; a truck arrived bringing the flowers from San Remo; the orchestra tuned; cameramen filmed each other as they filmed the Kunsthistorisches Museum and a fountain in a town at the Danube; and above all Valentino presented his designs for the ballet dancers' costumes to the press.

In the second part of the concert came the landscapery — modest vignettes of spots along the Danube, from Donaueschingen to the Black Sea, to accompany the waltz; as well as scenes from a hilariously tidy and romantically lit kitchen where a Viennese confectionery picturesquely creates its delicious-looking wares — and the theatrics — a ballet à deux somewhere and then the grand spectacle with six or so couples twirling around the museum. The costumes turned out well in my opinion, especially the flaring red dress in the first ballet. While the sparkles and colour-gradiented cloth cabbages on one or two of the pink gowns bordered on kitsch, they did convey the classic, whimsical greyish-pinkish ideal of the ballet frock as Degas painted it. In terms of utility, the fabric may have been too weighty. As for the dancing itself, Mama remarked approvingly afterwards that it was quite "dezent," but to me it felt more forced and artificial than it should. The fixed smiles are, for instance, really irritating, as are the clichéd mannerisms.

At this point I should write something insightful about the musical aspect of the offerings, but will sidestep the obligation for reasons of not having paid sufficient attention to it. What I did notice were passages where the orchestra were particularly united in their intuitive grasp of the quirks of the repertoire; with truly fine ensembles that is, of course, not rare. The offering from Otto Nicolai proved him a competent composer in my opinion, and the inclusion of Jacques Offenbach was also pleasing.

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As for last evening, I woke up (since my sleeping schedule is in an outlandish phase again) for dinner. We ate the traditional Knackwurst (wiener) with potato salad, pickles and pickled silver onions, cider, and punch, as well as a healthy dish of sliced yellow bell pepper. Not being there for the entirety of the concocting process, I can only guess that the punch contains white wine, Sekt, tonic water, canned mandarin oranges and apricots. Some of us watched Dinner for One; Papa turned to the piano to let the gentler music of Mozart resound as the firecrackers banged in the streets. Outside the snow, pellets rather than flakes, descended thickly and swiftly so that the already impressive snow cover grew even deeper.

At midnight we watched the countdown broadcast live from the Brandenburg Gate, and at the right moment Papa popped open the bottle of Sekt. Mama poured it out, after which we clinked glasses and sang "Auld Lang Syne," and lit sparklers at a candle. We had opened the curtains so that the fireworks being set off on the sidewalks were visible from both sides, and enjoyed the show.

This evening we dined on prawns with lemon, fish in mushroom sauce, chicory salad with radicchio and oranges, an Alsatian white wine, rice, etc. Mama had also bought biscuits filled with jam and completed with a ring of coconutish meringue, or topped with crunchy hazelnuts/peanuts and dipped in chocolate.

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Happy New Year!