The 2012 Vienna Philharmonic Summer Night Concert

Every year, as the days grow longer, Austria gets ready for one of the classical calendar’s highlights: the Vienna Philharmonic’s Summer Night Concert. This event, inaugurated in 2004, brings the prestigious ensemble together with some of the world’s most illustrious soloists—in front of an audience that regularly numbers more than 100,000—in the gardens of Vienna’s world-famous Schönbrunn Palace, a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

In 2012, the dynamic Gustavo Dudamel took the podium alongside the gold-standard orchestra to conduct a delightful program centered around a theme of waves and dance. The ensemble opens the evening with the Polonaise from Tchaikovsky's Eugene Onegin, followed by two more Russian masterpieces by Mussorgsky and Borodin. Next up, hear the waves of the ocean itself in Debussy's exquisite La Mer, full of vivid imagery and sweeping melody, which leads to lively dances by Strauss and Ponchielli, followed by memorable encores by Giménez and Johann Strauss Jr.

Photo © Richard Schuster