Auld Lang Syne (Times Gone By)

It was one of those days on which pale bands of suffused blue lie across the silver film that covers the sky, and it is almost impossible to say whether the sun will rise at an estimated time or not. Some intuition prompted me to go up to the brae amongst the desolate fields. The sea is shaped like a liquid blue, set like a gem, a sapphire, in a matrix of surrounding streaks of sooty grey. Here I am, alone to witness the deep peace of the winter morning. The peace of nature is undisturbed except the occasional sounds of the leaves and the chestnuts crackling under my feet. Humanity is no longer in agitation nor hail-storm of affliction. Life goes very placidly in these hours of the morning. I drink the stillness and the divine solitude of the winter at dawn. It is the hour of sanctity.

 

 

 

The old year has ended and the New Year has begun when the sun slowly creeps up from the sea with its rich gold, like a new shining medallion, with its ever increasing distinctness from the sky, drawing out every tint of rosy gold, green and crimson red. The green hills stand out indistinctly, blurred with the thinnest line of dim purple along their summits. Now and then the gulls make flickering specks of brightness when their wings touch on the facets of moving sea water; it sparkles like reawakening stars. I could spend for many hours meditating on the joy of existence and the perfect relation of man to nature, each completing the charm of the other.

 

 

 

 

 

I invited Gordon and his friends for a quiet dinner party in the evening for Hogmanay. I thought it would be nice to break the tradition of having dinner and watching the annual New Year’s Day popular concert with Vienna Philharmonic orchestra on TV this year.

 

Gordon suggested that he could bring a DVD of a recital concert with Renée Fleming, recorded at the legendary Goldener Saal (Golden Hall) of the Musikverein Vienna. I am very grateful to Gordon for suggesting this idea. I have never seen Renée Fleming performing live although I have acquired a few CDs of her and I’ve always loved her voice. Gordon said to me once that Renée Fleming is “an adagio singer!” Certainly, all her songs selection for this recital concert is predominantly reflective in mood.

Image credit: A Recital with Renée Fleming: Vienna at the Turn of the 20th Century Blu-ray Review (from here)

 

It is one of the most elegant concerts I have ever seen.  The Golden Hall of the Musikverein in Vienna is a well known concert hall for its acoustics. The music, the voice, the poetry, and the sumptuous golden interiors of the hall will delight and entrance the epicures. The audience who attended this concert was slightly different from the glamorous crowd who favours popular and predictable waltzes at the annual New Year’s Day concert. They looked more cultured and serious (one could hear a pin drops during this concert) and they had an air of noli me tangere. They seemed to be the type of audience who appears, at least on the surface of their manners, more comfortable in listening to rarely-heard, esoteric art songs without looking at their programmes and wondering whether they should clap now or wait. Both the performers and the audience were lost in the transient blisses of the music like the captivated children listening to the ancient folklores before their bedtime in the midsummer moonlight.

Image Credit: A Recital with Renée Fleming: Vienna at the Turn of the 20th Century Blu-ray Review (from here)

Renée sings mainly German lieder (songs) written by Hugo Wolf, Gustav Mahler, Arnold Schoenberg, Richard Strauss and Alexander Zemlinsky. At the end of the concert, one is left with a wistful and delightful feeling of a delicate evocation of former times. One also feels that this concert must be intensely personal to the singer in the way she renders the songs, in most cases the words are of equal importance to the music, many of our greatest poets are represented in these songs, with emotion and intelligence.

 

Image Credit: A Recital with Renée Fleming: Vienna at the Turn of the 20th Century Blu-ray Review (from here)

I shall always remember a new discovery I made from this concert which is the most charming operetta song by Erich Wolfgang Korngold called Frag’ mich Oft (trans. I often wonder), audio clip here, a pre-war song from Walzer aus Wien, first performed at the Stadttheater in Vienna on 30 October 1930. I fell in love with this sentimental and patriotic song and the meaningful lyrics although a fastidious music critic from The Telegraph dismisses this beautiful song when he writes: “a Johann Strauss pastiche and a sort of high-class Viennese answer to Maybe it’s Because I’m a Londoner.”

 

 

As long as there are gentlemen in Vienna,

As long as there are Viennese Melodies,

As long as the Prater is in bloom,

As long as there is Viennese song:

Even if a lot changes with time,

One thing always remains:

Viennese coziness.

That’s why I’m so in love with Vienna,

That’s why I’m so happy

To be a Viennese.

 

(Lyrics from the song, Frag’ mich Oft

Erich Korngold, after Johann Strauss II

From Walzer aus Wien

Libretto by Alfred Maria Willner, Heinz Reichert and

Ernst Marischka)