Conducting the staple Viennese fare of New Year's Day is no easy task. Quite apart from the basic essential panache - so drearily missing from Austrian Franz Welser-Möst's 2023 shot in Vienna itself, abundantly present this year from live wire Yannick Nézet-Séguin - there has to be the right space for the upbeat to the waltz, freedom in the melodies, energy but not mania in the fast polkas.
27-year-old Tom Fetherstonhaugh, best known as the founder of the enterprising Fantasia Orchestra, has the style in spades, and conveyed it to a clearly impressed National Symphony Orchestra Ireland, as well as to a packed audience of all ages. Continuity, too, as one of the best Fledermaus Overtures I've heard got the proceedings off to a fizzing start: big tone from the violins in the waltz, the right sly accelerando as would-be partygoers faking the pain of separation express their secret joy at the revels to come.
Among the waltzes were three of the very best: Lehar's Gold and Silver, where we were reminded that every single strain is melodically inspired; Josef Strauss's Sphärenklänge (Music of the Spheres), with its magical introduction launching the concert's second half; and possibly the greatest of them all, JSII's Emperor Waltz, which I haven't heard for too long. Not, for once, the ubiquitous last waltz of the Vienna concert, On the Beautiful Blue Danube, not even as encore - we got instead Eduard Strauss's jolly train polka schnell Mit Dampf (With Steam), and then the Laughing Song from Die Fledermaus, a last chance for young Irish soprano Ava Dodd (pictured above by Jim Chamberlain) to shine.
And shine she did, unleashing the full force of her vivacious operatic personality and perfect diction/meaning. She's definitely an Adele and not a Rosalinde - last year's "Klänge der Heimat" came from lyric-dramatic soprano Jennifer Davis, already established around the world, and this one had less impact. But as I noted in choosing Dodd as one of the outstanding newcomers of 2025, part of the pleasure is in seeing her gradually relax into her best form. The "Vilja-Lied" from The Merry Widow was exquisite, assisted by Fetherstonhaugh's keeping the orchestra magically quiet in the refrains, and a waltz-song justifiably imported from Italy, Arditti's "Il bacio", crowned Dodd's official part in the proceedings.
Though I could have done without Heuberger's "Im Chambre Separée", it was a surprise to get the vocal version of the Wiener Blut waltz, and the first half ended with Korngold's Straussiana, a lively and sassily arranged procession of the "New" Pizzicato Polka, another from Cagliostro in Wien and the waltz finale of Ritter Pázmán. More familiar offerings - Tritsch-Tratsch, Thunder and Lightning - zinged. By no means a second best to the New Year's Day concert on the telly, and with the pleasure of a live crowd responding very spontaneously.
