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MUSIC

Vienna waltzes the world into 2018

The Vienna Philharmonic did its best to give a troubled world a soothing start to 2018 on Monday with its traditional New Year's Concert, broadcast live in over 90 countries.

Vienna waltzes the world into 2018
Photo: Hans Punz/APA/AFP

The annual extravaganza, heavy on light-hearted waltzes by the Strauss dynasty harking back to Vienna's 19th-century golden era, is watched by some 50 million people, the Philharmonic said.

His greying hair flopping in time to the music, the conductor this year was Italian maestro Riccardo Muti, waving the baton in the hallowed Golden Hall of the Musikverein for the fifth time since 1993.

The 76-year-old has conducted some of the world's most prestigious orchestras including the Berlin Philharmonic, the New York Philharmonic and the Orchestre National de France.

Alongside Strauss favourites like “The Blue Danube”, the 2018 programme also featured the Overture to “Boccaccio” by Franz von Suppe and Alphons Czibulka's “Stephanie Gavotte”.

In the audience was Sebastian Kurz, since mid-December Austria's chancellor and the world's youngest leader at 31, accompanied at the Musikverein by Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte.

Other guests included the presidents of Estonia and Bulgaria. Bulgaria took over the rotating EU presidency from Estonia on January 1st and will hand it to Austria mid-year.

Kurz's conservatives formed a coalition with the far-right Freedom Party (FPOe) last month, giving it the interior, defence and foreign ministries as well as the vice-chancellorship.

CULTURE

New songs mark sixth anniversary of French star Johnny Hallyday’s death

Fans of the late Johnny Hallyday, "the French Elvis Presley", will be able to commemorate the sixth anniversary of his death with two songs never released before.

New songs mark sixth anniversary of French star Johnny Hallyday's death

Hallyday, blessed with a powerful husky voice and seemingly boundless energy, died in December 2017, aged 74, of lung cancer after a long music and acting career.

After an estimated 110 million records sold during his lifetime – making him one of the world’s best-selling singers -Hallyday’s success has continued unabated beyond his death.

Almost half of his current listeners on Spotify are under the age of 35, according to the streaming service, and a posthumous greatest hits collection of “France’s favourite rock’n’roller”, whose real name was Jean-Philippe Leo
Smet, sold more than half a million copies.

The two new songs, Un cri (A cry) and Grave-moi le coeur (Engrave my heart), are featured on two albums published by different labels which also contain already-known hits in remastered or symphonic versions.

Un cri was written in 2017 by guitarist and producer Maxim Nucci – better known as Yodelice – who worked with Hallyday during the singer’s final years.

At the time Hallyday had just learned that his cancer had returned, and he “felt the need to make music outside the framework of an album,” Yodelice told reporters this week.

Hallyday recorded a demo version of the song, accompanied only by an acoustic blues guitar, but never brought it to full production.

Sensing the fans’ unbroken love for Hallyday, Yodelice decided to finish the job.

He separated the voice track from the guitar which he felt was too tame, and arranged a rockier, full-band accompaniment.

“It felt like I was playing with my buddy,” he said.

The second song, Grave-moi le coeur, is to be published in December under the artistic responsibility of another of the singer’s close collaborators, the arranger Yvan Cassar.

Hallyday recorded the song – a French version of Elvis’s Love Me Tender – with a view to performing it at a 1996 show in Las Vegas.

But in the end he did not play it live, opting instead for the original English-language version, and did not include it in any album.

“This may sound crazy, but the song was on a rehearsal tape that had never been digitalised,” Cassar told AFP.

The new songs are unlikely to be the last of new Hallyday tunes to delight fans, a source with knowledge of his work said. “There’s still a huge mass of recordings out there spanning his whole career,” the source said.

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