This is that fabulous Venezualan Youth Orchestra again with Dudamel conducting. They are in Salzburg on tour and playing the Radetzky March..something like Austria's version of the Stars and Stripes Forever.
We are watching Europe go down the economic tubes and life there may not be the same for decades. Austria, a nice little country, very conservative, very proper they got in a canoe with all the rest of the continent is now in the middle of a lake and sinking. My friend in Vienna wrote me last night about all this from his point of view. It is sad and I think about this performance, with the people clapping and the nostalgic joy they express. You can see it in their eyes and faces. That "we were great once" look and now our boat is sinking.
Oh for the days of the Hapsburgs.