Dance with me, pretty boy, tonight
New Year's day, when I was little, always began with heading up to my Grandad's house to watch the New Year's concert broadcast from Vienna. Watch on the telly but listen, of course, on Radio 3 because telly speakers were rubbish and the sound was broadcast simultaneously on the radio[*].
My earliest memories of the concert are of Grandad telling me about Lorin Maazel, who first conducted the New Year concert in 1980 and went on to become a fixture. To this day, if I hear the Radetzky March anywhere I'm back in my Grandad's front room[**], clapping along with the great and the good of Vienna.
Anyway, as I mentioned last year, I've been trying to reinstate watching the concert as a new year tradition and it seems to have stuck. Vital components of this tradition are: brunch (it was bagels, cream cheese and smoked salmon this year), dressing gowns, sofas, and an argument about how they synchronise the ballet performances with the music.
In case you've never seen it, the concert is a full orchestra playing Strauss in a ridiculously over-gilded concert hall in Vienna. Mostly the footage is of orchestrans, the conductor, the audience, the gilding, the flowers, and some more gilding. For a few pieces (only two, this year) they cut away to some far flung palace and show a short, costumed ballet to the music.
And so, the argument goes, how do they make the dancers, some miles away, match the music? ChrisC has always maintained that the ballet is pre-recorded, and the orchestra plays to a click track. I have always staunchly resisted this theory, on the grounds that no self-respecting conductor of the international reputation of, say, Daniel Barenboim would play to a click track. I don't know it is done, but that's not it.
Anyway, this year I was moved to ask the internet, and found a forum where someone was asking just that question, and someone had written to ORF (the Austrian broadcaster) to ask. The original forum post is here; it's remarkably helpful, except for the bit where an otherwise apparently sensible person describes a German e-mail as being written "in Nazi".
Anyway, it turns out that the orchestra's rehearsal in September is recorded, and the ballet choreographed to the studio recording. When the concert is broadcast, the audio we hear for the ballet is the pre-recorded audio. Once the viewer is returned to the concert hall for the next piece, we are back with the live audio. Which is why before and after the ballet there is always a static shot of (for example) some flowers, or a nice gilded cherub until the audio and video feeds can be synched again.
So there you are :)
[*] ChrisC doesn't believe me that the broadcast was genuinely simultaneous. As a kid, I probably wasn't astute enough to notice. Can anyone remember how in time it was? Could you see a fraction-of-a-second difference? Alledgedly Freeview and DAB are synched these days, but I don't know how to pick up Freeview (we usually use Virgin) to check.
[**] For logistical reasons, his front room was actually at the back.
My earliest memories of the concert are of Grandad telling me about Lorin Maazel, who first conducted the New Year concert in 1980 and went on to become a fixture. To this day, if I hear the Radetzky March anywhere I'm back in my Grandad's front room[**], clapping along with the great and the good of Vienna.
Anyway, as I mentioned last year, I've been trying to reinstate watching the concert as a new year tradition and it seems to have stuck. Vital components of this tradition are: brunch (it was bagels, cream cheese and smoked salmon this year), dressing gowns, sofas, and an argument about how they synchronise the ballet performances with the music.
In case you've never seen it, the concert is a full orchestra playing Strauss in a ridiculously over-gilded concert hall in Vienna. Mostly the footage is of orchestrans, the conductor, the audience, the gilding, the flowers, and some more gilding. For a few pieces (only two, this year) they cut away to some far flung palace and show a short, costumed ballet to the music.
And so, the argument goes, how do they make the dancers, some miles away, match the music? ChrisC has always maintained that the ballet is pre-recorded, and the orchestra plays to a click track. I have always staunchly resisted this theory, on the grounds that no self-respecting conductor of the international reputation of, say, Daniel Barenboim would play to a click track. I don't know it is done, but that's not it.
Anyway, this year I was moved to ask the internet, and found a forum where someone was asking just that question, and someone had written to ORF (the Austrian broadcaster) to ask. The original forum post is here; it's remarkably helpful, except for the bit where an otherwise apparently sensible person describes a German e-mail as being written "in Nazi".
Anyway, it turns out that the orchestra's rehearsal in September is recorded, and the ballet choreographed to the studio recording. When the concert is broadcast, the audio we hear for the ballet is the pre-recorded audio. Once the viewer is returned to the concert hall for the next piece, we are back with the live audio. Which is why before and after the ballet there is always a static shot of (for example) some flowers, or a nice gilded cherub until the audio and video feeds can be synched again.
So there you are :)
[*] ChrisC doesn't believe me that the broadcast was genuinely simultaneous. As a kid, I probably wasn't astute enough to notice. Can anyone remember how in time it was? Could you see a fraction-of-a-second difference? Alledgedly Freeview and DAB are synched these days, but I don't know how to pick up Freeview (we usually use Virgin) to check.
[**] For logistical reasons, his front room was actually at the back.