For the fourth time, Matthias Fletzberger was invited to conduct the largest New Year's concert series in the world. On the occasion of the 20th anniversary of “Salute to Vienna” he conducted the New Year's Concerts in Philadelphia, Washington and New York (Lincoln Center) at the turn of the year 2015/16 and received storms of enthusiasm in sold-out concert halls.
The echo of this concert series so popular in America echoed as far as Austria. For example, the Salzburger Nachrichten reported:
“In the USA, on the other hand, you are closer to Vienna than you think in this country. For the fourth time, the Viennese pianist and conductor Matthias Fletzberger studied a program with the US ensemble Strauss Symphony of America. This time he not only had the Austro-Russian soprano Natalia Ushakova and the US tenor Brian Cheney, tenor in his New Year's program "Salute to Vienna", as guests, but also the European Ballet St. Pölten and dancers for the operetta arias, waltzes and polkas Viennese origin.
With concerts in the Kimmel Center in Philadelphia and in the David Geffen Hall in New York's Lincoln Center, the halls were enormously famous this year but still sold out, as were the concerts in New Brunswick and Strathmore. And there were smiling faces everywhere, as evidenced by the selfies Brian Cheney took with listeners. At the last bar of the Radetzky March, Cheney even snapped himself with the soprano and conductor (picture). Matthias Fletzberger is invited again, he will conduct “Salute to Vienna” 2016/17 in Canada. "
(Ernst Strobl, Salzburger Nachrichten, January 3, 2015)