Summer Night goes Stars and Stripes

[Eva Elisabeth]

I meant to post this sooner, hope it's not too late to alert you not to miss this on PBS.

This past Thursday (public holiday, Corpus Christi) I attended for the third time the magnificent Summer Night Concert at Schönbrunn Palace. It is an annual event and a gift by the Vienna Philharmonic to all music lovers (who actually come from all over the world to see it). Each year a different top conductor and Solist (last year Anna Netrebko!) are featured. Since it's a gift, entrance is free, and ca.100,000 music lovers use to heed the call, plus over a million via TV alone in German speaking countries.

This year's event featured Gustavo Dudamel and Yuja Wang, and the program was all New World - Bernstein, Gershwin, Hollywood, Stars and Stripes Forever - check it out here (and some pics for impression if you scroll down) :
https://www.sommernachtskonzert.at/index_en.html
Here you get an impression of the music and setting from the final rehearsal (without "the" audience):
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=gW3ZsylYNxw

I really loved all pieces, so I can't call any my favorite, but "The Star–Spangled Banner March" by Carl Michael Ziehrer (the guy who composed the Austrian National Anthem) was possibly the most interesting one and not what you would expect it to be. Ziehrer composed the piece in 1893 for the Chicago World Fair, where he and his orchestra were invited to to perform. It was meant a "March after American national tunes", and is a medley of „Marching Through Georgia“, „The Girl I Left Behind
Me“, „I Wish I Was in the Land of Cotton“ and „Yankee–Doodle"...

The concert will be broadcasted sometime soon by 70 "foreign" stations throughout the world including PBS. I'm sorry I couldn't yet find out when, but if you come across I highly recommend "virtual attendance"!!
       
PS: Schönbrunn was actually the Soldier's Home = summer residence of the Habsburg Emperors...