A Viennese New Year's Celebration With The ASO

The Twelve Days of Christmas are from Christmas until Epiphany on January 06th. Therefore, we are still in the midst of the Christmas Season. However, for those wanting to celebrate the arrival of the New Year in-between Christmas and Epiphany, The Alabama Symphony Orchestra is holding their annual New Year's Eve concert entitled "A Viennese Celebration!" on December 31st, 2024 at 6PM in the Jemison Concert Hall of the Alys Stephens Center in Birmingham, Alabama.

Modeled after the New Year's Day concert held annually by the Vienna Philharmonic which is televised on PBS and internationally in over ninety countries, the ASO's Viennese Celebration features lively Strauss Waltzes, marches, and highlights from the opera genre of music. The ASO performance will be conducted by their popular conductor, Christopher Confessore, who is known for entertaining audiences with his stand-up comedian style sense of humor. And the guest soloist for the ASO will be the soprano, Laura Corina Sanders. Audiences are encouraged to clap loudly after each waltz for often the Alabama Symphony Orchestra will tease the audience into thinking they aren't performing the famous Strauss classic, "The Blue Danube Waltz", but it is generally included in the encore. With the musicians of the Alabama Symphony Orchestra sounding particularly good on it.

Oddly enough, while Johann Strauss and his family of composers are associated with the cultural arts hub of Vienna in Austria, the musicians of the Vienna Philharmonic for many years shunned his music as being too "popular" for their taste. And it wasn't until the celebration of Strauss' 100th Birthday on October 25th, 1925 that the Vienna Philharmonic, conducted by Felix von Weingartner, performed a concert consisting solely of Strauss music. Nowadays, the musicians of the Vienna Philharmonic, choose an internationally renowned conductor to conduct their annual New Year's Day Concert. With this year's conductor being the Italian, Maestro Riccardo Muti.

Ticket prices for the ASO Viennese Celebration range from $12 to $66 dollars. And can be obtained here:Alabama Symphony Orchestra Special Event: New Year's Eve: A Viennese Celebration | UAB's Alys Stephens Center And for those who wish to see the actual Vienna Philharmonic's annual New Year's Day Strauss Concert, it will air on PBS beginning at 7PM Central Time on Wednesday, January 01st, 2024. With an encore beginning at 8:30PM Central Time on the same day. It will also be available on streaming through pbs.org and the PBS app beginning on January 02nd, 2024. This year's Vienna Philharmonic performance will celebrate the 200th anniversary of Johann Strauss' birth.