Perfect New Year treat

“New Year in Vienna” Halle Orchestra, Bridgewater Hall, Manchester, Marina Berry

THERE can’t be many better ways to find a pick-me-up after the Christmas and New Year festivities have come to an end than to join the fabulous Halle Orchestra for an afternoon of gaiety.

The music of the Strauss family is sure to lift the sprits of even the most jaded, and Saturday afternoon’s show to bid farewell to the last year and welcome 2010 did just that.

They performed under the baton of Bury-born Stephen Bell. The orchestra romped its way through a programme of music long-linked with New Year festivities.

There was Lanner’s “New Year Galop”, Lehar’s “Gold and Silver Waltz” and “Adele’s Laughing Song” gloriously brought to life by the elegant Natasha, from Johann Strauss II’s “Die Fledermaus”.

Some deft string-plucking added some fun for brothers Johann II and Josef Strauss’s “Pizzicato Polka” and orchestra leader Lyn Fletcher treated us to a superb violin play-in to an evocative aria from Lehar’s “Zigeunerliebe” (Gypsy Love).

The lion’s share of the programme was devoted to the Strauss family, and no Viennese celebration would be worth its salt without the magnificent “Blue Danube Waltz”, as ever reserved for the finale.

It was a fitting conclusion to this wonderful feelgood concert, and the encore brought the rousing “Radetzky March” and a final offering by Natasha of “I Could Have Danced All Night” from “My Fair Lady.”