This was the Vienna Summer Night Concert 2020

Under the direction of Valery Gergiev, the program ranged from “Rosenkavalier” to “Doktor Schiwago” and from grand opera to Wienerlied.

The Midsummer Night Concert has always been a television event. The images of the open-air concert in front of the yearning stage between the palace and the Gloriette always flickered like a summery counterpart to the New Year as a musically polished Vienna picture film on international screens. In Vienna itself, the event, which usually takes place in early summer, also has a social dimension, as each year around 100,000 Viennese gather among the perfectly trimmed bushes with free admission and listen to the sounds of the Philharmonic under the brightly lit night sky in devotional or even sometimes. exuberant mood. In the year of the pandemic, of course, unthinkable. Instead, the park was closed, 1,250 visitors were allowed in fixed spots and loose seats, and everyone else was directed to television screens.

But where other Corona organizers were unwittingly forced to broadcast concerts and sometimes had to enter new territory in an awkward or unimaginative way, ORF’s perfect television staging in castle park is already. a routine: the vertiginous camera flights over the grounds, the effective illumination of the sources with firelight, the image director (Henning Kasten) trained for years in the close-ups of the instrumentalists. Impressions of Vienna from Schönbrunn and elsewhere, ingenious restraint, this year for the first time by Teresa Vogl, and deep sound quality round out the Corona edition of the traditional concert. Anyone who had to cancel a planned trip to Vienna this year could comfort themselves cinematically and musically, or even become sad.

Despite the German travel warning, Jonas Kaufmann, who with his album “Mein Wien”, which was released earlier in the year, handed out a business card for his appearance at the Midsummer Night concert, was not far behind. . Two numbers of them, “When it gets dark” from “Countess Mariza” by Kalman and “Vienna, Vienna, only you” by Rudolf Sieczyński have appeared on the program, the German super-tenor also performed the hum aria “Pourqoui me reveiller” . “Werther” by Massenet and “Nessun dorma” by “Turandot” by Puccini. In fact, in addition to Kaufmann, who is currently rehearsing “Don Carlos” at the State Opera (the premiere is September 27), you will hardly find in his quiver a singer who has this combination of repertoire with such quality.

If the virus caused a lot of uncertainty, at least the concert motto “Love” was a safe bet and under this wide roof you could stretch Aram Khatschaturjan or Maurice Jarre, and them at the same time with Richard Wagner, Emmerich Kalman or Jacques Offenbach. to confront. More even than the love stories the pieces tell, this one summer night concert, disfigured by the pandemic and, in its essence, illuminated, is itself a proof of love. Valery Gergiev’s elegiac mine play against the backdrop of the Gloriette, the soft mixed sound of the Philharmonic strings and wind instruments, the bronze statues that look out onto the stage from every corner of the park: they ensure to the world that Corona is music and culture, so fragile in may have functioned over the past few months, ultimately it cannot hurt.