MANILA, Philippines - Okay, class. Let’s have a little bit of European history. The emperor Franz Josef ruled over Austria for many decades. Austria was then the core of the Austrian-Hungarian empire, allied with all-powerful Germany.
The assassination of Archduke Francis Ferdinand, heir to the throne of Austria-Hungary, by a Serbian radical led to the Great War (WWI) in 1914.
Now, class, Austria is a beautiful country with scenic mountains (remember Julie Andrews trilling and traipsing all over the Salzburg hills in the film version of “The Sound of Music?”). Austria is the land of the Vienna Boys Choir, Strauss the Waltz King, Mozart… and Hitler.
Gasp. Hitler?! “Austria may have been partly responsible for the war (WWII) because Hitler was Austrian, not German,” casually observes Helmut Gaisberger, an Austrian and general manager of Mandarin Oriental Manila. “Some speculate that Hitler began to hate the Jews when the art academy in Vienna, controlled by Jews, rejected him.”
Hitler, Gaisberger hastened to add, “succeeded in Germany and not in Austria.”
His remarks were made during conversations with the media in a recent press conference to announce the traditional Vienna New Year Concert, to be restaged Feb. 25, 7 p.m., at the Mandarin Oriental ballroom.
Annual event
The Vienna New Year Concert has been an annual event since 1939, and its broadcasts around the world have been brought to an estimated one billion people in 44 countries. Its restaged concert here, a formal affair, will feature the Philippine Philharmonic Orchestra under guest conductor Ernest Hoetzel, often called Austria’s Ambassador of Music, and Filipino pianist Rudolf Golez, sole prize winner of the Chopin competition in Kuala Lumpur.
The repertoire will showcase compositions by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Franz Lehar, Robert Stolz and the Strauss family. Golez will interpret Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 28 and Frederic Chopin’s “Grand Polonaise Brillante” and “Spianoto.”
Proceeds of the concert will go to the GeoChrist Foundation Inc., which seeks to make indigenous groups—specifically the Pala’wan and the Tagbanua—of Palawan self-reliant. The foundation is headed by Fr. Georg Ziselsberger, SVD.
“We hope to share with lovers of classical music in Manila the delightful experience that this awesome Austrian tradition has brought throughout the world and are taking the extra effort to ensure authenticity, including recreating to an extent the Musikverein (the concert venue in Vienna),” Gaisberger said.
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