In league with the ostriches
Created: 04/02/2022, 12:31 p.m
By: Susanne Greiner
No inn, no wine cellar - but infinitely much Viennese charm: The concert of the Neue Wiener Concert Schrammeln in the Rathausfestsaal was enthusiastic.
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Landsberg – Strumming on the guitar is easy.
But only a few master Schrammel music.
Four of them were guests at the town hall concerts in the festival hall on Friday evening: the Neuen Wiener Concert Schrammeln delighted their audience with three ostriches.
And Schrammel music that playfully and humorously masters the leap into the present.
They have the same first names as the Viennese ostriches: Josef and Johann Schrammel, brothers who saw the light of day in the last years of the 19th century – in Vienna, of course.
They composed and played as a quartet.
And they created their own music: the Schrammel music, "a bridge between folk and art music", describes accordion player Helmut Thomas Stippich.
At that time, the violin duo was joined by the "süße Hölzl", an extremely high clarinet, replaced by the harmonica after the musician's death.
And then the double bass, later replaced by the double guitar, a two-necked, job-saving combination of bass and guitar.
Helmut Thomas Stippich on the button accordion and Peter Havlicek on the double guitar.
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Their part is taken over by Peter Havlicek in the Neue Wiener Concert Schrammeln, founded in the 1990s.
Peter Uhler and Johannes Fleischmann bow the violins.
Together with Stippich they pay homage to the Schrammel music and combine it, smartly dressed in Viennese frock coats, into the present.
The music: waltzes, of course, Strauss, of course – Josef, Johann and Eduard.
But also Schrammel compositions like the D-Tanz, with violins in pianissimo, so as not to drown out Stippich's yodeling.
Whereby the accordion player also likes to abuse in a Viennese manner and cheers, bordering on the exaggerated.
Good mood, but never at the expense of the music.
The Vienna Concert Schrammeln violinists Peter Uhler (left) and Johannes Fleischmann.
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The second half is particularly inspiring: two Bukovinian dances with sobbing violins, "A zoats Bussel", according to Stippich a "traditional by Josef Haydn", which is reminiscent of Fendrich's best, because most melancholic, songs.
And the fantastic "Totentanz", based on a quote from Strauss with excursions into fado and Russian, squeaky strings and immense joy in playing.
The four are masters.
Also that of the change in tempo, this infinite delay of the one that should not be a millisecond longer.
Tot and Zeit are Viennese specialties.
They are seldom packaged as beautifully as the Schrammel.
After cheers, ecstatic applause and an encore, a good two-hour concert ended.
That left a round feeling of happiness in the stomach.
