Anja Bihlmaier dirigiert Werke von Strauß, Schostakowitsch und Ravel

It’s an absolute must at the Vienna Opera Ball: the Danube Waltz! Its magical, shimmering opening unerringly draws the dancing couples onto the dance floor. Hardly any other piece of music epitomizes Vienna, elegance, and the myth of the Austro-Hungarian era quite as much. Anja Bihlmaier contrasts this perfect waltz-like bliss with the dark side of the dance: inner turmoil, bitter mockery, and the reeling swan song of an era. In Dmitri Shostakovich’s work, the dance is present only as a shadow. The Cello Concerto No. 1 pulsates with nervous motoric energy, in grotesquely distorted rhythms reminiscent of marches, circus acts, or dance parodies. Bernd Alois Zimmermann takes this idea further and, in “Musique pour les soupers du Roi Ubu,” breaks down the dance into a garish collage of quotations from well-known works: a masquerade ball of music history. Finally, with Maurice Ravel’s “La valse,” the waltz returns—as a memory, as an intoxication, as a movement between order and ecstasy.

JOHANN STRAUSS (SON)
“On the Beautiful Blue Danube”
DMITRI SHOSTAKOVICH
Cello Concerto No. 1
BERND ALOIS ZIMMERMANN
“Music for the Suppers of King Ubu”
MAURICE RAVEL
“La Valse”

Conductor ANJA BIHLMAIER
Cello: NICOLAS ALTSTAEDT