IF you never go to another New Year Viennese concert, get to the RSNO's, conducted by David Danzmayr.
It opened in Glasgow on Tuesday night, and you can hear it at the Usher Hall tomorrow and in Dunfermline's Carnegie Hall on Saturday. It is a delectable evening with the engaging Danzmayr as musical tour guide through a programme that features two overtures by Franz von Suppe, once cliched, now neglected – The Beautiful Galathea and Poet and Peasant – Josef Strauss's completely un-Scottish Scottish Dance, Bizet's delightful and completely non-Viennese Jeux d'Enfants and Eduard Strauss's completely daft Carmen Quadrille.
All good fun, stabilised, as it were, by the authentic Viennese masterpieces of the Fledermaus Overture, the Tales from the Vienna Woods and, of course, the Blue Danube.
There is another reason to catch this show. Every Viennese New Year concert has its token soprano to sing the usual potboilers. The RSNO has one of the greatest sopranos on the planet in the person of Ailish Tynan, a woman of light wit and humour, extremely personable and characterful.
I have no idea how she will present her four numbers in the coming nights, but she was hilarious in Glasgow, then had this listener in tears four times as she sang the greatest performance of the Vilja Lied I have ever heard, along with arias from Heuberger's Der Opernball, Stolz's Der Favorit and Lehar's Giuditta.
Ravishing? I thought I had gone to heaven. What a voice. What an artist. What a natural entertainer. And what a glorious personality. And a wee tip: first violinist Maya Iwabuchi's solos, and her leading of the RSNO, should be observed.
HHHH
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