New Year's Eve Concert with Manfred Honeck by Various, Fra (2022/2022), Dirigent Manfred Honeck, Konzerthalle, Bamberg, Germany

As St. Augustine once said long ago: “Man, learn to dance, or the angels in heaven won't know what to do with you!” Our concert to mark the end of the old and start of the new year features musical fireworks sure to set your feet tapping. These sparkling works and their catchy tunes are brimming with optimism, joie de vivre and humour – just right to put us in a celebratory mood! These popular hits will whisk us away to an era when operettas and the music of waltzes and polkas were at the heart of both cultural and social life – as a contemporary enthused: “Their rhythms swept the events to the four winds, making them dance around in the air.” This evening’s programme includes arias, songs, and lively dances by the Strauss dynasty as well as Franz Lehár and Franz von Suppé – sumptuous and humorous music full of scenic effects that laughs at role models, love, and even politics. In the late 19th century, Vienna was caught up in a veritable frenzy of dance, and so, in addition to delightful polkas about dragonflies, chatterboxes, and thunder and lightning, our concert naturally will feature the exuberant waltz, which set couples spinning deliriously first one way, then the other on the dancefloor – despite medical warnings about “life-threatening dizziness”! The “king of the waltz” Johann Strauss was of the firm conviction: “When I play the violin, even chicks in their eggs dance along!” Our concert will see not chicks, but children frolicking on stage – and at the end, feathers, firecrackers, and other surprises will turn the concert hall into a proper New Year’s Eve party!