Summarize this content to 2000 words in 6 paragraphs in Arabic Unlock the Editor’s Digest for freeRoula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.Here’s some light listening for the summer. Each year the Vienna Philharmonic holds a popular open-air concert at Schönbrunn Palace just outside the city centre. Think of it as a Viennese equivalent of the Last Night of the Proms, though without the flag-waving.The basics of the programming are similar. The star soloist this June was Norwegian soprano Lise Davidsen and the conductor is Andris Nelsons, who introduce themselves with two excerpts from Wagner operas.The Viennese brass are unmistakable in the “Ride of the Valkyries” from Walküre. Then Davidsen lets rip in her party piece, Tannhäuser’s “Dich, teure Halle”; she’d surely raise the roof, if there had been one. Italian opera fares less well, however. Nelsons conducts the Overture to Verdi’s La Forza del Destino with little Italian passion and Davidsen is intermittently wobbly in the same opera’s “Pace, pace, mio Dio” — though she brings off the last few minutes splendidly.Like the Proms, the Viennese summer concert likes to feature composers who are having an anniversary. This year marks Smetana’s bicentenary and he is represented by a nicely detailed performance of “The Moldau” from Má Vlast and a pair of lively dances.Finally, the composers of Viennese operetta take the place of “Rule, Britannia!” Davidsen sings a high-energy aria from Kálmán’s Die Czárdásfürstin and Nelsons ends with the Viennese waltz rhythms of Strauss’s Wiener Blut. The distant applause is rather ungenerous.★★★☆☆‘Sommernachtskonzert 2024’ is released by Sony Classical
