'Salute to Vienna' celebrates New Year in grand style

By: PAM KRAGEN - Staff Writer | Wednesday, December 29, 2004 12:02 PM PST ∞

San Diegans can celebrate the new year Austrian-style on Jan. 1 at the annual "Salute to Vienna" concert at Copley Symphony Hall.

For the sixth year in a row, the Strauss Symphony of America will return to San Diego with an all-new program of Austrian-style New Year's music and dancing. The concert is expected to sell out.

The concert re-creates the internationally acclaimed New Year Day's concert that has been held every year for the past 63 years at the Musikverein Hall in Vienna. This year, that concert will be broadcast from Vienna to a worldwide audience of 1.2 billion people. It can be seen locally at 4:30 p.m. Saturday on KPBS.

Toronto-based Attila Glatz Concert Productions began reproducing a Viennese-themed New Year's concert in 1997 and it has grown over the years into several touring productions that play this weekend in 29 U.S, Canadian and European cities to a combined audience of more than 80,000 people.

In Vienna, the concert takes on grand proportions. Saturday's Viennese spectacular will feature the Viennese Philharmonic performing in the Musikverein Hall, where the music will be broadcast live into the Viennese State Opera. There, the opera ballet will perform to the waltzes and polkas of Johann Strauss and other composers from the late 1800s and early 1900s.

In San Diego, the concert will feature more than 75 musicians, singers and dancers. Members of the Vienna Opera Ballet will perform traditional Viennese waltzes and polkas in traditional ballet and period costumes. The Strauss Symphony of America will be conducted by Viennese conductor Klaus Arp. Featured vocal soloists are Polish soprano Katarzyna Dondalska and Filipino tenor Otoniel Gonzaga, who will perform operatic arias and Viennese songs.

"Salute to Vienna"

When: 2:30 p.m. Jan. 1

Where: Copley Symphony Hall, 750 B St., San Diego

Tickets: $35-$75

Info: (619) 220-8497

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