The Vienna Philharmonic's annual Sommernachtskonzert or Summer Night Concert, founded in 2004 and held on the quintessentially Viennese grounds of Schönbrunn Castle, has been a roaring success, attracting crowds as large as 100,000. As with the annual New Year's concert, the conductorship rotates. The 2019 conductor, Gustavo Dudamel, has also conducted the New Year's concert. Here he stretches the Gemütlichkeit probably beyond what has been done for either concert, bringing a total of six American works out of the ten ...
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The Vienna Philharmonic's annual Sommernachtskonzert or Summer Night Concert, founded in 2004 and held on the quintessentially Viennese grounds of Schönbrunn Castle, has been a roaring success, attracting crowds as large as 100,000. As with the annual New Year's concert, the conductorship rotates. The 2019 conductor, Gustavo Dudamel, has also conducted the New Year's concert. Here he stretches the Gemütlichkeit probably beyond what has been done for either concert, bringing a total of six American works out of the ten played, plus the finale of Dvorák's Symphony No. 9 in E minor, Op. 95 ("From the New World"), to the program. One wonders what the Viennese crowd thought; the applause seems genuine enough, and the two encores, concluding as traditionally with Johann Strauss II's Wiener Blut, Op. 354, are in place. Perhaps Dudamel had an eye to the Vienna concerts' large role in U.S. public television fundraising, but whatever the case, his program is well-shaped. Leonard Bernstein's Candide...
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