Neujahrskonzert

«They can’t even count to three» is a German saying used when someone doesn’t quite seem in their right mind. One, two three – it’s child’s play, is the implication. But in music, something so elementary and seemingly simple can be incomparably peculiar, thorny and difficult, and this always becomes apparent whenever musicians try to get the Viennese waltz to sway and swing. It’s more a case of «one, two – and maybe three», as Bruno Walter once tried to explain to an American orchestra. The two earlier, the three later – that’s what he meant by «maybe». It’s a question of feeling. And it’s a feeling the Tonkunstler Orchestra have in their bones – for waltzes as well as fast polkas, marches and many other genres of so-called light music. What’s difficult about the feeling is that the audience must never feel the difficulty. As the new year comes in, we want to experience not the rapid one-two-three of time whirling past us but the sense that the music is raising us up. That’s when we feel in our right minds. And that’s what the Tonkunstler Orchestra delivers every time. Happy New Year, or as we say in Austria: Prosit Neujahr!