United Kingdom A New Year’s Celebration: WNO Orchestra / David Adams (violin, leader, concertmaster) and Associate Artists (Erin Rossington, soprano, and William Stevens, bass). Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama, Cardiff, 17.1.2025. (LJ)
Johann Strauss II – Overture, Csárdás (Klänge der Heimat / Sounds of my Homeland) (from Die Fledermaus); Bei uns z’Haus (At Home) Waltz; Tik-Tak Polka
Josef Strauss – Die Libelle (The Dragonfly) Polka-Mazurka; Delirien (Delirium) Waltz
Eduard Strauss – Ohne Bremse (Without Brakes) Polka
Mozart – ‘O, wie will ich triumphieren’ from Die Entführung aus dem Serail
Dvořák – Slavonic Dance No.1 in C major; Carnival Overture
Wagner – ‘Mögst du, mein Kind’ from The Flying Dutchman
Brahms – Hungarian Dance No.4
Kálmán – ‘Heia, heia, in den Bergen’ from The Gypsy Princess
I last attended a Welsh National Opera (WNO) concert in December and wrote about how the choristers advocated for better funding during their ‘A Christmas Chorus’ concert (read the review here). Financial cuts from both the Welsh and English Arts Council have seen cultural institutions across the country struggle. This year, the WNO will have only 20 full-time choristers (half its original size). Following the loss of all its Arts Council Wales funding, the Welsh National Theatre, which was established in 2009, was forced to announce its final curtain call. Thankfully, due to individual efforts, January seems to offer more hope than we experienced in December.
One week ago, Michael Sheen announced that he will champion a new National Theatre for Wales that will collaborate with cultural institutions across the country, including the WNO. Even though this announcement was made just one day after the Senedd Sports and Culture Committee published a report that shows Wales near the bottom of the list of European countries’ figures for public spending, I am hopeful that it will shine a spotlight on the urgency of the situation for cultural bodies in Wales. Sheen passionately stated that he wants to ‘tell big stories on big stages for big audiences’, putting culture at the forefront of the solution. In this concert at the Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama, the WNO did the same thing. Under the direction of the orchestra’s leader and concertmaster, David Adams, the WNO Orchestra advocated for their longevity by performing the uplifting music associated with Vienna’s New Year’s Concert.
It was an evening of familiar favourites. The Strausses (Edi, Johann II, and Josef), Brahms, Wagner, and Dvořák were all part of the WNO Orchestra’s programme. And much like the celebratory concert at the Wiener Musikverein’s Golden Hall that takes place on January 1st each year, the audience could enjoy the familiar jocularity and participatory moments synonymous with the New Year Day’s concert. Good humour, pirouetting cellos, the memorable ‘tik-tak’ shout at the end of the Tik-Tak Polka, and audience members clapping to the second repetition of the main motif of the Radetzky March encore contributed to the sense of joie de vivre. Due to its range of pieces, solo performances from the WNO Orchestra’s Associate Artists, and strong sense of occasion — this concert constituted the eighth and final ‘New Year’s Celebration’ for the orchestra — in this review, I shall mention highlights from the evening.
As a whole the orchestra is strong, and it contains some standout musicians. For example, its members have come to depend on the surety and talent of Rosie Biss, leader of the cello section. Kitty Cheung also demonstrated clear and attentive leadership of the second violins as Acting Second Principal. Though brief, Thomas Verity’s klezmer-inspired solo during Imre Kálmán’s ‘Heia, heia, in den Bergen’ from Die Csárdásfürstin (also called The Gypsy Princess), was memorable. This is no doubt due to Verity’s role as one of the four band members of Klezmer-ish, a band whose music is dedicated to this Jewish-inspired gypsy jazz genre. Oboist Lucie Sprague merits special mention as Section Principal. Her performance of the oboe solo in the Johann Strauss Overture to Die Fledermaus was evocative of the more eastern sounds of Hungary than the composer evokes in this section. Sprague enabled this more contemplative moment in C minor to linger in the mind when Strauss’s livelier melodious sections came in. Whilst the waltzes and polkas of the evening may sound lighter and spritelier when performed by the Vienna Philharmonic (they are, after all, known for their ‘Viennese lilt’), the WNO Orchestra played the more earthy, specifically Hungarian-influenced (or style hongrois), sections very well with Brahms’s Hungarian Dance No.4 a strong favourite amongst the audience. (Another favourite, of course, was the encore of Strauss’s Blue Danube).
Brahms’s twenty-one Hungarian Dances (published in 1869 and 1880) were inspired by Ede Reményi, a violinist born in the industrial town of Miskolc, approximately 100 miles north-east of Budapest. Reményi met Brahms as a consequence of his support for the Hungarian Revolution of 1848 which led to his expulsion from Austria and decision to live in Germany, where Brahms was also living at the time. Indeed, Brahms was only fifteen when they met (in 1850), but took from Reményi (and, of course, Franz Liszt) a deep appreciation for the folk or gypsy style music of the csárdás which formed the foundation of the two sets of Hungarian Dances. This type of musical exoticism that recalls the nineteenth-century stereotype of the daring, romantic, and entrancing gypsy is characteristic of style hongrois which Jonathan Bellman discusses at length in his book The Style Hongrois in the Music of Western Europe (1993). The opening of Brahms’s Fourth Hungarian Dance is one of the most recognisable instances of style hongrois. Its dramatic and intense use of double thirds (with tremolos) make for a passionate opening, which the WNO strings played with commitment and the seriousness required of the F minor key. Their alla zoppas were equally weighty, adding heavy punctuation to the opening phrase. Most surprising is the section in F major which provides a fairground-like interlude. For Bellman, such ‘kaleidoscopic shifting between moods with no attempts at (or desire for) transition between them’ reflect ‘society’s mixed feelings about the Gypsies, of the fear and revulsion, envy and attraction’ (p.127). When commenting on the piece during the concert, Adams reflected on these contradictions, describing the circus-like section as ‘quite strange’. I, for one, found this ‘strangeness’ very welcome in a concert of all too familiar favourites. Indeed, it is what makes this Hungarian Dance (No.4) stand out from the other well-known Dances (especially Nos. 1 and 5).
Two associate artists— Erin Rossington (soprano) and William Stevens (bass) — joined the orchestra to perform four songs. Rossington’s voice is very promising with good resonance, and her acting is utterly convincing. She is a natural performer and uses her expressiveness well. She sounded assured in the spirited Kálmán piece, which requires more gusto and style hongrois-personality than Strauss’s ‘Czardas, Klänge der Heimat’. I will be interested to hear Rossington again as she will perform with the WNO as Countess Almaviva in Le nozze di Figaro when the production tours to Swansea’s Grand Theatre on 27 February this year. Stevens’s diction and German articulation was very good. He was much more comfortable in the slightly higher bass-baritone range of Wagner’s ‘Mögst du, mein Kind’ (from The Flying Dutchman) than in Mozart’s ‘O, wie will ich triumphieren’ (from Die Entführung aus dem Serail).
This was an accomplished recital of music by composers who either lived on the banks of, travelled on, and/or performed music about ‘der schönen bauen Donau’. ‘The blue Danube’ is most often associated with the instrumental version of Strauss’s waltz which he composed in 1866. But its inspiration came from a political poem by Karl Isidor Beck about the Seven Weeks’ War wherein Austria was defeated by Prussia. In 1889, Franz von Gernerth amended Beck’s political verse, writing a more triumphant, romanticised and unifying poem that conveys the spirit of the waltz as we know it today. The third verse speaks of the magical qualities of the Danube which brings musical inspiration and song:
Die Nixen auf dem Grund,
Die geben’s flüsternd kund,
Was alles du erschaut,
Seitdem über dir der Himmel blaut.
Drum schon in alter Zeit,
Ward dir manch’ Lied geweiht.
Und mit dem hellsten Klang
Preist immer auf’s Neu’
Dich unser Sang.
The mermaids from the riverbed,
Whispering as you flow by,
Are heard by everything
Under the blue sky above.
The noise of your passing
Is a song from old times
And with the brightest sounds
Your song leads you ever on.
To wind back to the opening of this review, the ‘brightest sounds’ and songs ‘from old times’ that lead us ‘ever on’ can only be heard if cultural institutions like the WNO receive funding. After hearing their orchestra perform once more, I can only restate their worthiness of our support.
Lucy Jeffery