On June 20, Yuja Wang joins the Wiener Philharmoniker for the Summer Night Concert at Schönbrunn Palace, led by Gustavo Dudamel. Ms. Wang performs Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue, a landmark of American music, widely regarded as an embodiment of the Jazz age’s upbeat lyricism and dance-driven energy. The program features compositions that highlight the connections between Austria and the New World.
Dudamel leads the ensemble in Bernstein’s Overture to Candide, one of the most frequently performed orchestral compositions by a 20th-century American composer; Strauss’ Jubilee Waltz, which was composed after he had visited the United States, and it contains a quotation from the “Star Spangled Banner”; and Max Steiner’s famous Casablanca Suite, which helped cement the composer as the “father of film music.”
Sousa’s Stars and Stripes Forever is a patriotic American march, considered to be the composer’s magnum opus. Barber’s famous Adagio for Strings is celebrated for its fragile simplicity and emotion. The program concludes with Ziehrer’s Sternenbanner March, known as the classical Austrian military march, then Dvořák’s powerful Symphony No. 9, the New World Symphony, which was written during the first year of the composer’s tenure in the United States.