The 2019 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 2019, the Vienna Philharmonic and the charismatic Gustavo Dudamel take the audience on a musical journey to America—with a special appearance by piano virtuoso Yuja Wang, who dazzles in Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue. Maestro Dudamel and the ensemble are note-perfect in works by quintessential American composers like Bernstein, Copland, Barber, and Sousa, as well as the lively fourth movement of Dvořák's "New World" Symphony and the Sternenbanner (Stars and Stripes) March by Austrian composer Carl Michael Ziehrer.

Photo © Max Parovsky