PRESS QUOTES

"I found these performances superior to those by the Vienna Symphony... major credit must go to Karl Sollak, the Vienna-born conductor who taught these players to speak musical Viennese with an accent almost as authentic as his own... His conducting had both elegance and grace, with a light touch that complemented the relaxed, genial remarks he offered from the podium. Sollak is a master of those subtle inflections of phrasing and rhythm that together produce what is generally considered to be Viennese style; he conducts them like the miniature masterpieces of Viennese dance music that they are."
- John von Rhein, Chicago Tribune - January 6, 2004

"...The program, based on Vienna's traditional New Year's Day concert, featured four Hungarian National Ballet dancers and two stellar soloists, baritone Georg Lehner and soprano Claudia Ema Camie. Most of all, it focused on the great Viennese operettas and ballets. And that meant plenty of glossy music from the 19th century Strauss dynasty -- especially Johann Jr., with glittering highlights from "Merry Widow" composer Franz Lehar and Franz von Suppe's vibrant "Morning, Noon and Night in Vienna." The exquisitely balanced program pivoted on its central works -- arias from Mozart's "The Magic Flute," brilliantly brought to life by Camie and Lehner in showstopping performances... It's all too easy for a tribute like "Salute to Vienna" to merely entertain, to present its generally familiar material in a way that makes it routine or even tiresome -- as might be expected from an annual tour making a return visit to Daytona Beach. But this "Salute to Vienna" wasn't merely a showcase of music and dance. It featured fresh selections, new soloists, musicians from a regional orchestra that sounds better every time it appears here, a superb dance ensemble and, in Clyde Mitchell, a witty Pops conductor making the most of a background that includes Florida roots and Viennese training... "Salute to Vienna" was an enjoyable, highly polished performance that did justice to all its elements, but above all to the music itself, and to the culture it represented."
- Laura Stewart, Daytona Beach News-Journal - January 6, 2004

"Americans can get as nationalistic as anyone else, but when it comes to music, they can also be amazingly adoptive. Every Fourth of July, for example, Americans salute their independence from Britain by cranking up the 1812 Overture, a composition by Tchaikovsky celebrating Napoleon's defeat in Russia. Go figure. And for several years now, Americans have demonstrated a keen interest in celebrating the New Year with light Viennese music. Thanks to the televised broadcasts of the enormously popular New Year's Day concerts by the Vienna Philharmonic, people all over the world have come to associate lilting waltz strains and bouncy polkas with the start of another calendar. In the United States, this appreciation has been given extra fuel by an ambitious enterprise founded by a Canadian impresario, Attila Glatz, and his wife. Since 1995, their concert production company has been presenting Salute to Vienna programs all over this country and Canada. The programs provide a taste of what audiences in Vienna get each New Year's Day in the famed Musikverein. Between Dec. 31 and Jan. 4, Salute to Vienna will be presented in 33 North American cities, including Baltimore, where an ensemble of 75 instrumentalists, singers and dancers will offer the inimitable sounds of Johann Strauss and his contemporaries. (By the way, the Glatz productions are recognized by the city of Vienna as authentic Viennese celebrations and endorsed by the heads of the Austrian government.) Giving the Salute to Vienna in Baltimore will be Swiss soprano Christiane Boesiger, Austrian tenor Thomas Sigwald, members of the Vienna Opera Ballet, and the Strauss Symphony of America (featuring members of the Chamber Orchestra of Philadelphia). Johannes Wildner, leader of the Johann Strauss-Ensemble of the Vienna Symphony Orchestra will be on the podium."
- Tim Smith, Baltimore Sun - January 1, 2004

"Jerry Hadley hasn't sung in Boston since he appeared with the Boston Pops in 1992, but the popular American tenor will be back in Symphony Hall on Sunday afternoon to participate in a "Salute to Vienna" -- a salute, more specifically, to the tradition of the Vienna Philharmonic's internationally celebrated New Year's concerts. Hadley explains that "Salute to Vienna" began a few years ago because of Attila Glatz, a Hungarian concert promoter now living in Toronto. "This began as a relatively modest undertaking with just a few concerts in Canada, and has grown to something like 60-70 concerts across America and Canada during the weeks around New Year's. There are seven or eight different troupes of performers, and this is my third year of working with the organization. I told them that as long as my vocal cords deign to come together, they can count on me every year, because I enjoy it so much."

Hadley has combined his mainstream operatic career with singing new music (the title role in John Harbison's "The Great Gatsby") and lighter music -- Viennese and American operettas and American musical comedies. "Don't make a mistake about `light' music -- from a purely technical standpoint, you gotta have your ducks in a row to sing this stuff," Hadley says. "Viennese operetta is as hard as any opera to sing. One of the main problems is the style. You must not overdo the rubato, and you need to understand the difference between sentiment and sentimentality. And the later Viennese operettas by Franz Lehar and the others, the ones written from the 1920s onward, come after the dissolution of the Austro-Hungarian empire. There is a longing for something lost in all of those pieces, a bittersweet fondness for a time that can never be again."

For Sunday's salute, Hadley will sing arias from Lehar's "The Land of Smiles" and Kalman's "Countess Mariza," and join the Russian soprano Helena Holl for duets from "The Land of Smiles," "The Merry Widow," and "The Czardas Princess." There will also be dancers from the Vienna Opera Ballet and a group of Strauss waltzes and polkas. "I can't tell you how enthusiastically audiences respond to these programs," Hadley says, "but for them to work, you have to approach everything with respect and seriousness. This is something I learned from all my work with Leonard Bernstein. You cannot perform this music with a wink and a nod and the attitude that `I know this is schlock, but we'll get through it somehow.' "..."
- Richard Dyer, Boston Globe - January 2, 2004

"Vienna, or at least the Viennese spirit, waltzes into Motown Sunday as Detroit joins 32 other North American cities in a three-four welcome for the New Year. And just as the Vienna waltz doesn't reflect a steady pulse so much as an indulgent mindset, the Strauss Symphony of America, which offers a traditional Viennese program complete with operetta selections and dancers at Orchestra Hall, takes listeners on a fantasy flight that happens to be thoroughly grounded in home turf. Under the baton of Viennese-born conductor Christian Schulz, a 65-piece orchestra, made up largely of musicians from the Detroit Symphony Orchestra and the Michigan Opera Theatre Orchestra, will have a go at that most sensual, intoxicating and elusive of musical genres, the Strauss waltz. Think of the Strauss Symphony of America not as an ensemble but as an uplifting project, and you'll have the viewpoint of the program's founder, the Hungarian-Canadian impresario Attila Glatz. Through the long New Year's weekend, local ensembles all around Canada and the United States will play Strauss under Glatz's banner for the ninth year. ³This is happy music,² he says. ³It never fails to make people feel good.² "
- Lawrence B. Johnson, Detroit News - January 2, 2004

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