ABBA and Verdi for a 525-Year-Old Boy Band
review
R
Rachel Einarsson2 min read|2. October 2024
Wiener Sängerknaben - say the name, and expectations are immediately higher, the stars twinkle a little brighter and the traditions queue up extra long.
The world-famous boys' choir from Vienna sang Verdi, R. Strauss Jr. and ABBA when they visited Musikhuset Aarhus on 22 September 2024.
But the sweet-voiced boys had to make do with a rather heavy audience, who were far from throwing themselves into dancing, as Manolo Cagnin otherwise encouraged. We apologise. Because we rather liked the song.
For some reason the mood among the Danish audience was simply rather heavy that day. A few showed smiles and enthusiasm, but otherwise you easily got a sideways look if you raised your voice in the slightest or even whooped and did anything beyond the entirely conventional, manual work of applause.
We apologise, as mentioned.
The Italian conductor Manolo Cagnin, who is in charge of one of the Wiener Sängerknaben's four touring choirs, was otherwise in splendid spirits and proved to be a very stage-savvy, welcoming and lively conductor and pianist. He switched between conducting and playing while directing. And it was not his fault that we Danes sat so heavily in our seats.
The first half of the concert contained a classical, very well varied programme, while in the second half we got a more mixed soundscape with, for example, ABBA, Willie Nelson and Stefan Nilsson.
There were about 20 singers on stage, and that sounds sufficient at first glance. But on the large stage in Symfonisk Sal, with great distance between the singers, it seemed a little uncertain and at times a little fragile and disjointed. An even and uniform sound was hard to come by. Instead you heard a kind of bouquet of several individual voices. And in its own way that is also charming. But the differences in the singers' strength became too obvious. And I write this because one naturally has particular expectations of the world-famous choir, which last year could celebrate its 525th anniversary.
There was, however, value for money, in the sense that we got almost two hours of singing. 22 numbers. One was afraid that it might wear too much on the delicate boys' voices. But one felt taken seriously and took away many good impressions.