Vienna Pops winds up 2025 at Winthrop Hall, with Mark Coughlan, Audrey Jarvis, Bella Marslen, Beth Redwood

Maestro Mark Coughlan’s Vienna Pops Orchestra wound up the old year exactly where it started, at UWA’s Winthrop Hall – the home of Perth classical music throughout 2025. The 38th Perth Rotary New Year’s Eve Gala celebrated Viennese tradition, with detours through Europe and the Americas before returning to wallow in the Beautiful Blue Danube. Coughlan quipped it was a circular path copied by guest artists violinist Audrey Jarvis and sopranos Bella Marslen and Beth Redwood – all WA raised and departing overseas before bringing back their experience to share on home turf. Johann Strauss II opened the bill with Thunder and Lightning Polka, announced in explosive percussion and quicksilver strings as offbeat brass pressed the pace. Silky smooth woodwind and strings alternated with high-energy trumpet and drum towards a booming conclusion. Viennese Spirit then set the scene for an imperial wedding. A gracious octet of strings caressed the air, ebbing and flowing like the Danube itself as Coughlan shaped the sound with waltz-like gestures. Redwood took the stage to the exotic Mediterranean strains of Franz Lehar’s My Lips Kiss So Hot, a towering performance probing the upper reaches of the hall, dramatic and provocative to the last sultry beat. If that was a tad hot, Josef Strauss’s Fireproof! – written to celebrate a foundry of flame-resistant safe deposit boxes – came complete with an anvil for comic relief. There was no mistaking the composer’s family pedigree in a rollicking rhythmic romp, as the beat rang out from an automobile brake drum and slapstick erupted across the stage. Marslen cooled the mood in Song to the Moon, from Dvorak’s Rusalka. Lavish tones lilted across the hall to reveal a voice maturing in range. Harp and flute were delicate foils to a dramatic tour de force, with hints of mezzo-soprano in timbre. Jarvis followed with Saint-Saens’ Introduction and Rondo Capriccioso; a lyrical opening giving way to frenzied phrases in the earworm Rondo section. A crisp, expressive touch drew full tone and colour as Coughlan kept the orchestra in lockstep with idiosyncratic measures. Rising to high harmonics then plunging to mid-range, Jarvis reprised the theme with virtuosic aplomb; shredding the cadenza and her bow in a crystalline cadence. Johann Strauss II’s Pizzicato Polka delivered what it promised with an infinitesimal lightness of touch in delicately plucked strings, punctuated by whimsical triangle and stark chords across the back row. Nature Boy (Ahbez, arr. Alex Turley) opened in shimmering strings and mellifluous horn to draw in full orchestra before subsiding to a heartbeat for the portentous theme. Clarinettist Ashley Smith, a fixture at UWA and Winthrop Hall, gave a masterclass in mesmeric minimalism, warbling through a whispered cadenza with gossamer touch, echoed in flute, for a crushed-chord conclusion. Another shimmer in strings, with intrigue from woodwind, slowly broached Offenbach’s dreamy Barcarolle; a romantic favourite fronted by the sonorous sopranos, as the matinee morphed from instrumental mastery to magic and mystery in the blink of an eye. Mambo, from Bernstein’s West Side Story, burst on to the stage with Latin fervour, bustling beats and audience participation. Brass bravura and mercurial woodwind offset a flurry of strings and pulsating percussion, coursing through to the last dramatic shout: “Mambo!” Finally back to Vienna, Strauss’s Beautiful Blue Danube waltz worked its timeless charms in a bubbling build up, rising from a trickle to a torrent to a serene vista of the river in full flood as orchestral currents comingled to close out the year. But of course there was an encore, as balloons rained down and the Radetzky March rang out in a blaze of symphonic colour.