The Summer Night Concert of the Vienna Philharmonic is the world's biggest annual classical open-air concert, each year taking place in the magical setting of the Schönbrunn Palace Baroque park in Vienna. The 2021 concert took place on June 18, with a reduced and selected audience of 3,000 people in attendance due to the pandemic.
The theme for this year was Fernweh, an untranslatable German term roughly meaning "farsickness" - the opposite of homesickness. The program included musical favorites from Bernstein, Verdi, Rachmaninov, Sibelius, Elgar, Debussy, and Holst. The concert represented pianist Igor Levit & British conductor Daniel Harding's debuts at the SNC, and this recording is the pianist's first release with orchestra. The concert was broadcast on TV and radio in more than 60 countries, and thus reached an audience of millions.
