REVIEW :: New Year's Viennese Serves Perennial Favourites

From The West Australian
by Neville Cohn
Friday 02/01/09

CONCERT
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Vienna Pops
Perth Concert Hall
Review: Neville Cohn
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For 21 years, John Christmass has mined the seemingly limitless repertoire of light classical music associated with Austria's capital to draw capacity audiences to the Vienna Pops concerts. These, with lots of laughter and nostalgia-drenched offerings, have routinely drawn capacity audiences to the Concert Hall.
New Year's Eve was no exception to the rule.

With the indefatigable, genial David Hawkes as compere and the New I Voci Singers on best form, this was vintage Vienna Pops. I particularly admired choral singing in the Alleluia from Mozart's Exultate Jubilate as well as Tim Cunniffe's charming arrangement of Shubert's An die Musik for choir and strings. It was a beautifully considered in Interpretation.

For years, tenor Justin Freind has been a stalwart of the Vienna Pops and he was in particularly good form in Strauss' Gondola Song with diction of exceptional clarity. But in The Drinking Song from The Student Prince, electronic amplification of this fine voice bordered on the excessive.

Another Charm-laden delight was provided by Renee Martin, Josephine Christmass and Kellie Orchard in the Evening Prayer from Humperdinck's Hansel and Gretel.

Some fleeting lapses in intonation aside, Pavel Sergeyev's account of the finale from Mendelssohn's Violin Concerto was a clear crowd-pleaser, prompting an avalanche of applause that resulted in the movement being encored. I admired the silvery tone that Sergeyev drew from his violin.

Adrian Kelly was trumpet soloist in a villainously difficult arrangement of themes from Die Fledermaus.

Strauss' perennially popular Radetsky March brought the house down, with conductor Peter Moore as adept in conducting orchestra and singers as coaxing spot-on rhythmic responses from enthusiastically applauding audience. Von Suppe's Poet and Peasant Oveture was given an admirably energetic reading but an account of The Blue Danube would have benefited from a rather more Viennese lilt.

Over the years, the Vienna Pops concerts have raised almost $300,000 for worthy causes.