The energy the National Concert Hall staff have shown in promoting the two Taipei concerts of the Vienna Philharmonic is extraordinary seeing that all tickets were sold in the first two days they were on sale back in January.
This orchestra's visits have in fact become almost routine, but what makes it special this time is the presence of Seiji Ozawa on the rostrum for the first event, tickets for which all went in an astonishing four hours. Taipei, however, is determined to make the event even more special by staging a live transmission of Ozawa's concert in the Chiang Kai-shek Plaza -- when this was done in 1993 in near-identical circumstances, 80,000 people showed up.
In addition, hopes of getting an actual ticket, and a free one at that, are not quite zero. Starting at 7pm tickets will be handed out for a prize draw for five free tickets for the 7.30 concert.
Staff assure Taipei Times that the seats will be good ones. It's also canny of the organizers to have seen to it that the second concert, conducted by Marcello Viotti, has marginally the more attractive program. Whereas Ozawa (March 2) is offering Strauss's Don Juan and Brahms' First Symphony, plus a modernist piece by Webern, patrons of the Viotti concert (March 3) can look forward to Schubert's Unfinished Symphony, Mozart's Sinfonia Concertante, and Rimsky-Korsakov's Scheherazade, all three much-loved works.
It's not at all surprising that there was such a rush for the Ozawa tickets. Taiwan, it can be argued, is driven by the electronic media, and just about everyone must have at one time or another seen the gray locks of the wiry Japanese maestro, so long associated with the Boston Symphony Orchestra, as he conducted these same Vienna musicians in one of their annual New Year concerts.
The Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra plays on March 2 and March 3 at the National Concert Hall.
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