The Vienna Residence Orchestra wins the "Unterföhringer Moor" audience award

Unterföhring – Austro-Hungarian k&k (royal and imperial) happiness on the Day of German Unity – but that didn’t annoy the visitors in the crowded community centre in Unterföhring.

 Mayor Franz Schwarz (l.) hands over 6000 Euros prize money to Sylvia Moser and her orchestra. Photo: Förtsch

 On the contrary: they applauded the musicians on the stage with enthusiasm. Indeed, the Vienna Residence Orchestra had played its way into the hearts of the audience from Unterföhring two years ago. Otherwise the orchestra would not have been allowed to receive the “Unterföhringer Moor” on Monday evening. After all, this cultural prize is a special prize: it is not awarded by cultural critics, but by the audience themselves.

As the mayor Franz Schwarz emphasized in his congratulatory speech, this “audience favourite” was the great residence orchestra in 2009. Sylvia Moser, the astonished and delighted orchestra manager, accepted not only the “Unterföhringer Moor”, designed by Margit Festl, a sculptor from Ismaning, and the medals for her musicians, but above all the 6000 Euro prize money. “We would have played for a normal fee today, too!”, she said with a smile. “But we won’t give the prize money back now!”

The musicians’ manager founded the orchestra at the beginning of the 1990s with her husband, the pianist, conductor and composer Paul Moser, who passed away in 2005. The evening ran just as casually as Ms Moser’s acceptance speech: casually, but filled with style and prowess. It was mostly the musicians who created this atmosphere, above all the conductor, Gerhard Lagrange, who conveyed his expertise with humour and charm, as well as the violinist and concertmaster, Wolfgang Göllner, who presented Vittorio Monti’s ‘Csárdás’ with devotion and virtuosity. The musicians filled the majority of the evening will the typical and dulcet Viennese classics by Franz Lehar and Johann Strauss: waltzes and polkas to make your heart melt.

As such, the visitors needed to be a bit romantic so as to be able to enjoy an evening filled with songs about love and devotion. And that’s exactly what they were. That’s why there were frequent outbursts of intermittent applause. With tenor Franz Supper and soprano Eva Kumpfmüller’s arias from well-known operettas, like ‘The Land of Smiles’ or ‘Countess Mariza’, the hall filled with so much sound and intensity that it was a real delight for the audience. The dancers provided a particular feast for the eyes: Alexandru Tcacenco is a dashing, young Romanian and the Danish Josefine Tyler was enchanting. The couple almost floated over the narrow stage. When Tyler turned, she gave the musicians quite a challenge, with her flittering skirt sweeping the sheet music off the music stands time and again.