Kick Off 2016 Old-School With Waltzes, Strauss and a ‘Salute to Vienna’
By • January 4, 2016 0 1056
If “Old Lang Syne” is the song of New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Eve celebration with music, dancing (in the streets or elsewhere) and a smack on the lips at the last second of the old year, then the Blue Danube Waltz is probably the music of the first days of the new year.
That will be the case at the Music Center at Strathmore’s 15th annual New Year’s Concert, 3 p.m., Sunday, Jan. 3, with the annual return and presentation of the Salute to Vienna New Year’s Concert. It will be nothing less than a champagne-feel-good music-and-dance resurrection of an empire from long ago across the ocean, the world of fin-de-sicle Austria and the Austro-Hungarian Empire of Emperor Franz Joseph and the musical world of composers like Johann Strauss, the waltz king, among others.
It’s a world of tuxedoed, elegant and handsome swains dancing with their beloved, in gossamer, eye-popping gowns, and the signature piece of music to this afternoon is “The Blue Danube Waltz” by Strauss. It is a piece of music that is almost miraculous in its ability to engender feelings of joy, happiness and wanting to move around a ballroom without your feet seeming to touch the ground. If, after a long Saturday night and morning, start your Sunday by playing “The Blue Danube,” let it swirl over you like warm light, have a cup of Viennese-roasted coffee and start your day smiling. It will cure hangovers, the sour taste of early morning television political discussions, and any sort of angst. As music, it is its own happy dance.
“I think that it’s probably the biggest selling work of music ever,” said Marion Glatz, who, with her husband, the Hungarian pianist Attila J. Glatz, runs the concert production company that produces “Salute to Vienna” among numerous other musical productions which tour worldwide.
Marion Glatz—aside from her work with “Salute to Vienna”—is ideally suited to be what she is, an articulate cheerleader for the music that is emblematic of the show. She’s the daughter of a Viennese father and a Polish mother, received a master’s degree in business in Nuremberg, Germany, lived for a number of years in Munich, a Bavarian city which has a close affinity to Vienna in temperament, culture and music. Today, she lives in Toronto with her husband. The couple have made “Salute to Vienna” the largest simultaneously produced concert in North America.
“We are celebrating our 20th anniversary this time around,” Marion Glatz said in a telephone interview. “It is meant to make people think of a delightful, sophisticated, sparkling world, somewhat like the annual Vienna New Year’s concert with the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra. You are transported to a different world, where the idea is to make people feel good, with a certain kind of style. It’s a form of total entertainment. The waltzes endure—they always have—and so does the music. There is, I think, especially today, when there seems to be so much trouble in the world, a special need for what this concert offers.”
The Glatz duo began with a single concert in Toronto in 1995, and the production spread like wild fire. “We were at the Kennedy Center before,” she said. “Now are [at the Strathmore] with this beautiful hall and music center. . . . Obviously, there’s a hunger for this kind of music and show.”
The Strathmore “Salute to Vienna” will feature the Strauss Symphony of America, with Matthias Fletzberger conducting, and also features Viennese soprano Natalia Usdhakova, American tenor Brian Cheney and dancers from the Europaballett St. Polten & International Champion Ballroom Dances. There will be vignettes from operas and operettas like “The Merry Widow,” “Das Fledermaus” and other works, along with polkas and dances.
The couple is engaged with other productions, including “Bravissimo! Opera’s Greatest Hits,” “The Godfather Live,” the North American Tour of the Vienna Mozart Orchestra and others.
“In his time, Strauss was the biggest musician. Bigger than Elvis—and maybe the Beatles,” said Glatz, who is making sure that the music continues to create—if not eras—perfect afternoons and moments of good feeling.
