NEUJAHRSKONZERT DER WIENER PHILHARMONIKER 2019

Celebrating New Year's Eve

After celebrating the New Year's Eve, today, The Grandma has travelled to Vienna to listen to The Vienna New Year's Concert. The Grandma loves classical music and this event is one of the most important of the year.

Austria is a wonderful country and The Grandma has decided to stay some days there, visit her old friends in Tyrol and enjoy these wonderful lands. Claire Fontaine, Tina Picotes, Joseph de Ca'th Lon and Tonyi Tamaki are going to join The Grandma during the next days.

During the flight to Vienna, The Grandma has studied a new lesson of her Elementary Language Practice manual (Grammar 60 & Checkpoint 10).

More information: Making Comparisons-Superlative Adjectives

The Vienna New Year's Concert or Neujahrskonzert der Wiener Philharmoniker is an annual concert of classical music performed by the Vienna Philharmonic on the morning of New Year's Day in Vienna, Austria. The concert occurs at the Musikverein at 11:15. The orchestra performs the same concert programme on 30 December, 31 December, and 1 January but only the last concert is regularly broadcast on radio and television.

The concert programmes always include pieces from the Strauss family -Johann Strauss I, Johann Strauss II, Josef Strauss and Eduard Strauss. On occasion, music principally of other Austrian composers, including Joseph Hellmesberger Jr., Joseph Lanner, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Otto Nicolai, the Vienna Philharmonic's founder, Emil von Reznicek, Franz Schubert, Franz von Suppé, and Karl Michael Ziehrer has featured in the programmes.

In 2009, music by Joseph Haydn was played for the first time, where the 4th movement of his Farewell Symphony marked the 200th anniversary of his death. Other European composers such as Hans Christian Lumbye, Jacques Offenbach, Emile Waldteufel, Richard Strauss, Verdi, and Tchaikovsky have been featured in recent programmes.

The Grandma in the Musikverein, Vienna

The announced programme contains approximately 14-20 compositions, and also three encores. The announced programme includes waltzes, polkas, mazurkas, and marches.

Of the encores, the unannounced first encore is often a fast polka. The second is Johann Strauss II's waltz The Blue Danube, whose introduction is interrupted by applause of recognition and a New Year's greeting from the conductor and orchestra to the audience. The final encore is Johann Strauss I's Radetzky March, during which the audience claps along under the conductor's direction.

In this last piece, the tradition also calls for the conductor to start the orchestra as soon he steps onto the stage, before reaching the podium. The complete duration of the event is around two and a half hours.

More information: Wiener Philharmoniker

The concerts have been held in the Goldener Saal, Golden Hall, of the Musikverein since 1939. The television broadcast is augmented by ballet performances in selected pieces during the second part of the programme. The dancers come from the Vienna State Ballet and dance at different famous places in Austria like Schönbrunn Palace, Schloss Esterházy, the Vienna State Opera or the Wiener Musikverein itself.

In 2013, the costumes were designed by Vivienne Westwood. From 1980 until 2013, the flowers that decorated the hall were a gift from the city of Sanremo, Liguria, Italy.

Neujahrskonzert der Wiener Philharmoniker

In 2014, the orchestra itself provided the flowers. Since 2014, the flowers have been arranged by the Wiener Stadtgärten. 

In 2017, the orchestra performed for the first time in new attire designed by Vivienne Westwood and Andreas Kronthaler. There had been a tradition of concerts on New Year's Day in Vienna since 1838, but not with music of the Strauss family. From 1928 to 1933 there were six New Years's concerts in the Musikverein, conducted by Johann Strauss III. These concerts were broadcast by the RAVAG.

In 1939, Clemens Krauss, with the support of Vienna Gauleiter Baldur von Schirach, devised a New Years' concert which the orchestra dedicated to Kriegswinterhilfswerk, Winter War Relief, to improve morale at the front lines. After World War II, this concert survived, as the Nazi origins were largely forgotten, until more recently.

More information: Wien

The concert was first performed in 1939, and conducted by Clemens Krauss. For the first and only time, the concert was not given on New Year's Day, but instead on 31 December of that year. It was called then a special, or extraordinary concert, Außerordentliches Konzert.

There were no encores in 1939, and sources indicate that encores were not instituted until 1945. Clemens Krauss almost always included Perpetuum mobile either on the concert or as an encore. The waltz The Blue Danube was not performed until 1945, and then as an encore. The Radetzky March was first performed in 1946, as an encore. Until 1958, these last two pieces were often but not always given as encores.

The concert is popular throughout Europe, and more recently around the world. The demand for tickets is so high that people have to pre-register one year in advance in order to participate in the drawing of tickets for the following year. Some seats are pre-registered by certain Austrian families and are passed down from generation to generation.

More information: Salute to Vienna

Where would I be without Johann Strauss's beautiful 'Blue Danube?'

Without this piece of music I wouldn't be the man I am today. 

It's a tune that brings out the emotion in everyone 

and makes them want to waltz.

Andre Rieu

JOE COCKER: WITH A LITTLE HELP FROM MY FRIENDS

Joe Cocker

Today, The Grandma is still visiting Vienna. The Christmas Markets are very popular in the city and she's buying some presents, especially, music and books. In a little old stand, The Grandma has bought an exclusive single of Joe Cocker's With a little help from my friends. Two years ago, in a day like today, Joe Cocker left us but we continue enjoying his beautiful music and his broken voice.

John Robert Cocker (20 May 1944–22 December 2014) was an English singer and musician. He was known for his gritty voice, spasmodic body movement in performance and definitive versions of popular songs.

Cocker was born on 20 May 1944 at 38 Tasker Road, Crookes, Sheffield. He was the youngest son of a civil servant, Harold Cocker, and Madge Cocker, née Lee. According to differing family stories, Cocker received his nickname of Joe either from playing a childhood game called Cowboy Joe, or from a local window cleaner named Joe.

More information: Joe Cocker Official Site

Cocker entered the big time with a groundbreaking rearrangement of With a Little Help from My Friends, another Beatles cover, which, many years later, was used as the opening theme for The Wonder Years.

Joe Cocker's single cover

In 1982, at the behest of producer Stewart Levine, Cocker recorded the duet Up where we belong with Jennifer Warnes for the soundtrack of the 1982 film An Officer and a Gentleman. The song was an international hit, reaching number 1 on the Billboard Hot 100, and winning a Grammy Award for Best Pop Performance by a Duo. The duet also won an Academy Award for Best Original Song, and Cocker and Warnes performed the song at the awards ceremony.

 
In 1993 Cocker was nominated for the Brit Award for Best British Male, in 2007 was awarded a bronze Sheffield Legends plaque in his hometown and in 2008 he received an OBE at Buckingham Palace for services to music. Cocker was ranked number 97 on Rolling Stone's 100 greatest singers list.

More information: Up where we belong wins Oscar, 1983

While performing a concert at Madison Square Garden on 17 September 2014, fellow musician Billy Joel stated that Cocker was not very well right now and endorsed Cocker for induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame before impersonating the singer in a take on With a little help from my friends.

Cocker died from lung cancer on 22 December 2014 in Crawford, Colorado at the age of 70. The two remaining living ex-Beatles, Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr, were among those who paid tribute to the singer, while Cocker's agent, Barrie Marshall, said that Cocker was without doubt the greatest rock/soul singer ever to come out of Britain.

 I have one message for young musicians around the world: Stay true to your heart, believe in yourself, and work hard.

Joe Cocker

F.SCOTT FITZGERALD: THE LOST AMERICAN GENERATION

Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald

The Grandma is in Vienna. She arrived on The Orient Express and today she has been visiting the bookshops looking for a special book: The Gran Gastby. After walking across the downtown of the Austrian capital, she has found the book and she wants to talk to you about its author, F.Scott Fitzgerald.

Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald (September 24, 1896–December 21, 1940) was an American novelist and short story writer, whose works illustrate the Jazz Age. While he achieved limited success in his lifetime, he is now widely regarded as one of the greatest American writers of the 20th century. Fitzgerald is considered a member of the Lost Generation of the 1920s. He finished four novels: This Side of Paradise, The Beautiful and Damned, The Great Gatsby, and Tender is the Night. A fifth, unfinished novel, The Love of the Last Tycoon, was published posthumously. Fitzgerald also wrote numerous short stories, many of which treat themes of youth and promise, and age and despair.

More information: History.com

Born in 1896 in Saint Paul, Minnesota, to an upper-middle-class family, Fitzgerald was named after his famous second cousin, three times removed on his father's side, Francis Scott Key, but was always known as plain Scott Fitzgerald. He was also named after his deceased sister, Louise Scott Fitzgerald, one of two sisters who died shortly before his birth. Well, three months before I was born, he wrote as an adult, my mother lost her other two children... I think I started then to be a writer.

His father was Edward Fitzgerald, of Irish and English ancestry, who had moved to St. Paul from Maryland after the Civil War and his mother was Mary McQuillan Fitzgerald, the daughter of an Irish immigrant who had made his fortune in the wholesale grocery business. Fitzgerald was the first cousin once removed of Mary Surratt, hanged in 1865 for conspiring to assassinate Abraham Lincoln.

Fitzgerald died of a heart attack. Fitzgerald's body was moved to the Pierce Brothers Mortuary.

More information: Open Culture

At the time of his death, the Church declined the family's request that Fitzgerald, a non-practicing Catholic celebrated for his risqué and provocative Jazz Age writings, be buried in the family plot in the Roman Catholic Saint Mary's Cemetery. Fitzgerald was originally buried in Rockville Union Cemetery. 

Fitzgerald died before he could complete The Love of the Last Tycoon. His manuscript, which included extensive notes for the unwritten part of the novel's story, was edited by his friend, the literary critic Edmund Wilson, and published in 1941 as The Last Tycoon.

 After all, life hasn't much to offer except youth, and I suppose for older people, the love of youth in others. 

F. Scott Fitzgerald

VIENNA & CLASSICAL MUSIC: THE CITY OF DREAMS

The Grandma in Vienna, Austria

The Grandma has arrived to Vienna, the capital of Austria, this morning. She's travelling on The Orient Express. Vienna is an incredible city and The Grandma wants to share her visit with you.

Vienna, Wien, is one of the nine states of Austria. Until the beginning of the 20th century, it was the largest German-speaking city in the world, and before the splitting of the Austro-Hungarian Empire in World War I, the city had 2 million inhabitants. 

The city is located in the eastern part of Austria and is close to the borders of the Czech Republic, Slovakia, and Hungary. In 2001, the city centre was designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

Apart from being regarded as The City of Music because of its musical legacy, Vienna is also said to be The City of Dreams because it was home to the world's first psycho-analyst, Sigmund Freud. 

More information: Vienna / Wien City Hall

The city's roots lie in early Celtic and Roman settlements that transformed into a Medieval and Baroque city, and then the capital of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. It is well known for having played an essential role as a leading European music centre, from the great age of Viennese Classicism through the early part of the 20th century. The historic centre of Vienna is rich in architectural ensembles, including Baroque castles and gardens, and the late-19th-century Ringstraße lined with grand buildings, monuments and parks.

The Grandma waiting the tram in Vienna

Evidence has been found of continuous habitation since 500 BC, when the site of Vienna on the Danube River was settled by the Celts. In 15 BC, the Romans fortified the frontier city they called Vindobona to guard the empire against Germanic tribes to the north. One of the earliest references to Vienna is from the Jewish historian, Josephus, who recounts that the king of Judea, Herod Archelaus (ca. 23 BCE–18 CE) was banished to the city of Vienna in Gaul by Caesar.

Close ties with other Celtic peoples continued through the ages. The Irish monk Saint Colman or Koloman, Irish Colmán, derived from colm dove is buried in Melk Abbey and Saint Fergil was Bishop of Salzburg for forty years, and twelfth-century monastic settlements were founded by Irish Benedictines. Evidence of these ties is still evident in Vienna's great Schottenstift monastery, once home to many Irish monks.

More information: About Vienna

In 976, Leopold I of Babenberg became count of the Eastern March, a 60-mile district centering on the Danube on the eastern frontier of Bavaria. This initial district grew into the duchy of Austria. Each succeeding Babenberg ruler expanded the march east along the Danube eventually encompassing Vienna and the lands immediately east. In 1145, Duke Henry II Jasomirgott moved the Babenberg family residence from Klosterneuburg to Vienna. Since that time, Vienna remained the center of the Babenberg dynasty.

The Grandma in Saint Stephansdom, Vienna

In 1440, Vienna became the resident city of the Habsburg dynasty. It eventually grew to become the de facto capital of the Holy Roman Empire (1483–1806) and a cultural centre for arts and science, music and fine cuisine. Hungary occupied the city between 1485–1490.

In the 16th and 17th centuries, the Ottoman armies were stopped twice outside Vienna. A plague epidemic ravaged Vienna in 1679, killing nearly a third of its population.

In 1804, during the Napoleonic Wars, Vienna became the capital of the Austrian Empire and continued to play a major role in European and world politics. 

More information: The History of Vienna

In 1938, after a triumphant entry into Austria, Austrian-born Adolf Hitler spoke to the Austrian Germans from the balcony of the Neue Burg, a part of the Hofburg at the Heldenplatz. Between 1938 and the end of the Second World War, Vienna lost its status as a capital to Berlin as Austria ceased to exist and became a part of Nazi Germany. It was not until 1955 that Austria regained full sovereignty.

The Grandma in a Christmas Market in Vienna

On 2 April 1945, the Soviets launched the Vienna Offensive against the Germans holding the city and besieged it. British and American air raids and artillery duels between the SS and Wehrmacht and the Red Army crippled infrastructure, such as tram services and water and power distribution, and destroyed or damaged thousands of public and private buildings. Vienna fell eleven days later. Austria was separated from Germany, and Vienna was restored as the republic's capital city, but the Soviet hold on the city remained until 1955.

The four-power control of Vienna lasted until the Austrian State Treaty was signed in May 1955. That year, after years of reconstruction and restoration, the State Opera and the Burgtheater, both on the Ringstraße, reopened to the public. 

More information: UNESCO World Heritage Centre

The Soviet Union signed the State Treaty only after having been provided with the political guarantee by the federal government to declare Austria's neutrality after the withdrawal of the allied troops. This law of neutrality, passed in late October 1955 and not the State Treaty itself, ensured that modern Austria would align with neither NATO nor the Soviet bloc, and is considered one of the reasons for Austria's late entry into the European Union.

Vienna is a handsome, lively city, and pleases me exceedingly. 

Frederic Chopin

POIROT & THE GRANDMA ON THE ORIENT EXPRESS

Poster of The Orient Express

Autumn is here and The Grandma has decided to go on holiday. As you know, she doesn't like crowds and this is the main reason because of she prefers travelling in this season.

She wants to stay some months travelling around Europe and Asia and she has chosen The Orient Express, the famous train. 

First of all, The Grandma has arrived to Milan where she's going to take this historic train accompanied by an old friend Hercule Poirot, a Belgian detective.

Let's go to join them in this unforgettable experience...

The Orient Express was the name of a long-distance passenger train service created in 1883 by Compagnie Internationale des Wagons-Lits (CIWL).

The original route, which first ran on October 4, 1883, was from Paris, Gare de l'Est, to Giurgiu in Romania via Munich and Vienna. At Giurgiu, passengers were ferried across the Danube to Ruse, Bulgaria, to pick up another train to Varna. They then completed their journey to Constantinople by ferry.

The route and rolling stock of The Orient Express changed many times. Several routes in the past concurrently used The Orient Express name, or slight variants thereof. Although the original Orient Express was simply a normal international railway service, the name has become synonymous with intrigue and luxury travel. The two city names most prominently associated with the Orient Express are Paris and Constantinople (Istanbul), the original endpoints of the timetabled service.

More information: Venice Simplon-Orient Express

The Orient Express was a showcase of luxury and comfort at a time when travelling was still rough and dangerous. CIWL soon developed a dense network of luxury trains all over Europe, whose names are still remembered today and associated with the art of luxury travel – The Blue Train, The Golden Arrow, North Express and many more.

Schedule of The Orient Express

In 1977, The Orient Express stopped serving Istanbul. Its immediate successor, a through overnight service from Paris to Vienna, ran for the last time from Paris on Friday, June 8, 2007.

After this, the route, still called The Orient Express, was shortened to start from Strasbourg instead, occasioned by the inauguration of the LGV Est which affords much shorter travel times from Paris to Strasbourg. The new curtailed service left Strasbourg at 22:20 daily, shortly after the arrival of a TGV from Paris, and was attached at Karlsruhe to the overnight sleeper service from Amsterdam to Vienna.

On 14 December 2009, The Orient Express ceased to operate and the route disappeared from European railway timetables, reportedly a victim of high-speed trains and cut-rate airlines. The Venice-Simplon Orient Express train, a private venture by Orient-Express Hotels Ltd. using original CIWL carriages from the 1920s and 1930s, continues to run from London to Venice and to other destinations in Europe, including the original route from Paris to Istanbul.

In March 2014 Orient-Express Hotels Ltd. was renamed Belmond.

Download Murder on The Orient Express by Agatha Christie

Who knows who will be on board? A couple of spies, for sure. At least one grand duke; a few beautiful woman, no doubt very rich and very troubled. Anything can happen and usually does on the Orient Express.
 

Morley Safer

KAREN & EUROVISION SONG CONTEST IN VIENNA

Ukraine

The family could reach one of the most important dreams for Karen: sing in the Eurovision Song Contest. This year, Vienna was the city which organizes it and The Collins Family moved from Salzburg to the capital of Austria.

The Song Contest was amazing and after a hard fight between the local artist, Conchita, and Karen, who represented Ukraine, our heroine won playing a beautiful song called “Hou, hou”, a song which talked about peace and love, obviously.

The Collins Family continued its English preparation and during this intensive week, they revised grammar: Must/Mustn’t, Can/Can’t, Could/Couldn’t, Should/Shouldn’t, the Conditional Tense or the Second Conditional and advanced in its reading about Robinson Crusoe’s novel.

 

More information: Must/Should Exercises