Four-hundred-and-forty-two years of Austrian–Brazilian friendship took the form and sounds of a Concerto Austriaco in Brazil’s capital Brasilia this past Tuesday, celebrating the bicentennial of Brazil in an event sponsored by the Austrian Embassy and the efforts of Ambassador Stefan Scholz that brought to the stage violin virtuoso Dominik Hellsberg of the Vienna Symphony, for a series of violin concerts in Brazil including a performance in Rio de Janeiro this Friday, Aug. 19.
Ambassador Scholz welcomed the audience and special guests with a passionate recount of the tight history between the two countries and the contribution of Emperatriz Dona Leopoldina to the history and development of Brazil, facts which have been exalted in a series of events in various cities organized and sponsored by the Austrian embassy.
Soon, the beautiful and iconic melody of Johann Strauss’s Blue Danube swelled through the concert hall, instantly erasing the distance between Austria and Central Brazil, creating the magic atmosphere of the evening.
As the horns and staccato wind chords, the music began its sway into the classic waltz tempo under the direction of renowned maestro Claudio Cohen and the sounds of Orchestra Sinfonica de Teatro Nacional Claudio Santoro.
The waltz’s flourishing finale gave way to the introduction and music of Hellsberg, who brought the old-world sounds with a modern intellect and technical precision.
He gave a commanding solo performance with dazzling virtuosity and musical assurance underscoring the relevance of the event and making the evening into momentous and musically delightful occasion.
Hellsberg, who plays a violin by Carlo Ferdinando Landolfi, Milan 1746, and whose first album, released in 2018 by Hänssler Classic was dedicated to Debussy’s Preludes, was awarded a “Classical Shock” and nominated in three categories for the coveted German Opus Klassik award in 2019.
Just two years later, he recorded with Hänssler Classic, L’Art de la Fugue by Bach, in a new version by Thierry Escaich. His luminary career has taken him to concert halls throughout Austria and abroad in London, New York, Budapest, Prague, Sao Paulo, Belem, Brasilia, and he performs Friday in Rio de Janeiro.
In attendance as special guests were Ambassador Kenneth Nóbrega and Consul Luiz Otávio Ortigão of Itamaraty, Brazil’s State Department, Ambassador Ricardo Neiva Tavares of Brazil’s Supreme Federal Court, STF, Ambassador of Poland Jakob Tadeusz Skiba, South Korean Ambassador Lim Ki-mo, Bangladeshi Ambassador Sadia Faizunnesa, and diplomatic missions from the Dominican Republic and others, as well as Goiás International Relations representative Giordano Sárvio Cavalcante de Souza and Brasilia’s illustrious couple Karla Osório and her husband Guilherme Osório.
The evening rode to its conclusion with the softly elegant yet assertive pace of Mozart’s Symphony No 40 in Sol Minor K550 with its occasional bursts of jubilation along with its dark and sweet passages leading to the urgent and fretful finale that had the audience on its feet in acclaim
Hellsberg will perform at the Concerto da Imperatriz at the Teatro Municipal de Rio de Janeiro this August 19 at 7 pm.