Together Wiener Sängerknaben

• 1 Day-dah Light (Banana Boat Song) 02:14
• 2 La Paloma 03:29
• 3 Dona Dona 05:59
• 4 The Choir 03:51
• 5 Music for a While (Arr. Gerald Wirth for Choir, Cello and Organ) 02:50
• 6 Music Down In My Soul 04:50
• 7 Vem Kan Segla Förutan Vind 01:41
• 8 Dorogoi Dlinnoyu 05:07
• 9 O La, O Che Bon Eccho 01:31
• 10 La speranza 04:39
• 11 Niška Banja 02:32
• 12 Sesivuma Sigiya 01:53
• 13 Dreaming of Home and Mother - Ryoshu - Song Bie - Li Ge 04:43
• 14 Kojo no tsuki 03:10
• 15 Raghupati Raghav Raj Ram 03:21
• 16 Man kunto maula 03:46
• 17 Üsküdar'a Gider Iken 04:09
• 18 On The Road Again 03:16
• 19 Wellerman 02:23
• Total Runtime 01:05:24

Info for Together

The Corona pandemic has turned life upside down. The enemy is tiny, elusive. It can only be fought together. The Vienna Boys' Choir have chosen songs that deal with cohesion, give hope and courage, and show what music can do. They include hits like La Paloma and Dona dona. These are songs that have migrated; music with a migration background. People know and love them all over the world, and they are always sung with the same message - Together.

The programme begins with a piece about a choir rehearsal. The singers have to get together before they can really sing together. The journey starts with a work song at dawn, the Banana Boat Song. From the Caribbean it goes eastwards, towards the sun, via Europe and Asia to New Zealand. The programme ends with the "Wellerman", the shanty that stands for the mood in the Corona pandemic, which tells of the longing wait for the supply ship. The Boys' Choir dismiss their audience with Willie Nelson's "On the Road Again".

Wiener Sängerknaben
Manolo Cagnin, Kapellmeister
Oliver Stech, Kapellmeister
Gerald Wirth, Künstlerische Leitung
Gäste:
Janoska Ensemble
Gerhard Reiter, Percussion
Andreas Huber, Percussion
Hartmut Pfannmüller, Percussion
Jörg Ulrich Krah, Cello
Jeremy Joseph, Truhenorgel
Dieter Strehly, Shakuhachi
Ming Wang, Guzheng

The Vienna Boys' Choir
is one of the oldest and most famous choirs in the world: Boys have sung at the Habsburg courts since at least the 14th century; the earliest record of a boys' choir in the Vienna Hofburg dates back to the year 1296.

In 1498—more than half a millennium ago—the future Emperor Maximilian I relocated his court and his court music ensemble from various residences to Vienna. In doing so, he laid the cornerstone for the Vienna Court Music Chapel and, ultimately, for the Vienna Boys' Choir.

Over the centuries, the Viennese court attracted famous musicians such as Heinrich Isaac, Jacob Vaet, Philippe de Monte, Christoph Willibald Gluck, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Antonio Salieri, and Anton Bruckner. Joseph Haydn, Michael Haydn, and Franz Schubert themselves sang in the choir as children. Until 1918, the choir performed exclusively at the behest of the court. In 1924, the Vienna Boys' Choir was reorganized as a private association. Since 1926, 2,800 choirboys have undertaken more than 1,000 tours to 100 different countries.

Today, there are 90 active choirboys between the ages of nine and fourteen, divided into four concert choirs. Each of the choirs spends nine to eleven weeks of the school year—one trimester—on tour. The Vienna Boys' Choir travels to nearly every country in Europe, as well as Asia, Australia, South and Central America, the USA, and Canada. Together, the choirs perform approximately 300 concerts annually before an audience of nearly half a million people.

In Vienna, together with members of the Vienna Philharmonic and the Vienna State Opera Chorus, they uphold an imperial tradition as the Court Music Chapel: since 1498, they have performed regularly in the Hofburg Chapel.

Since 2012, the Vienna Boys' Choir has had its own small concert hall: at the MuTh, audiences can regularly experience the choirs performing their latest programs (the "Friday Afternoon" series).

The Vienna Boys' Choir’s repertoire spans from the Middle Ages to contemporary music. Motets and songs for treble choir form the core of their repertoire, alongside their own arrangements of folk songs and Viennese music. Benjamin Britten, Petr Eben, Raoul Gehringer, Ola Gjeilo, Elena Kats-Chernin, Heinz Kratochwil, Balduin Sulzer, Wolfram Wagner, and Gerald Wirth have all composed works for the choir.

Every year, the choir participates in performances of oratorios, Passion settings, and symphonic works—collaborating with the Vienna Philharmonic, the Vienna Symphony Orchestra, the London and Oslo Philharmonic Orchestras, the Staatskapelle Berlin, and the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra—under the baton of conductors such as Christian Arming, Ivor Bolton, Philippe Jordan, Klaus Mäkelä, Joana Mallwitz, Zubin Mehta, Riccardo Muti, Kent Nagano, Christian Thielemann, Lorenzo Viotti, and Simone Young. Particular highlights include their appearances at the Vienna Philharmonic’s New Year’s Concert—most recently in 2012 and 2016 under the direction of Mariss Jansons, and in 2023 under Franz Welser-Möst.

The Vienna Boys' Choir frequently appears in productions at Vienna’s opera houses and at the Salzburg Festival—most notably in Mozart’s *The Magic Flute*. Occasionally, they can also be seen in spoken-word theater productions—most recently in a staging of Thomas Bernhard’s *Jagdgesellschaft* at Vienna’s Akademietheater.

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