After more than eight decades, the New Year’s Concert in Vienna has become an event that transcends the musical to be part of a festive tradition with which to welcome new times. Good omens and good vibes are its hallmark and one of the reasons why it is worth not missing it. There are others that we detail below in the form of a decalogue, but there are no shortage of reasons for disaffection… In the end, the traditional carries with it uninspiring burdens such as the resistance to presenting women conductors or to delving into musical archives in search of a repertoire of 19th century composers, contemporaries of the Strauss dynasty, who in the 84 editions of this event have been taken into account on zero occasions.
Classical music reaches its zenith of popularity every January thanks to the event broadcast from Vienna. The general public is even interested, for once, in who the guy is – there are still no women – who directs the Vienna Philharmonic on such an important date. In general, people get the impression that they have caught up to date because, a priori, every conductor worth his salt must have been chosen to conduct the New Year’s Concert in Vienna. In fact it could have been that way for a while, when after the quarter of a century under the direction of the Austrian Willi Boskovsky (from 1955 to 1979) and after Lorin Maazel’s six-year term on this podium, in 1987 they began to have different batons every year. and great figures of the moment made their appearance: Herbert von Karajan, Claudio Abbado, Carlos Kleiber, Zubin Mehta, Riccardo Muti, Nikolaus Harnoncourt, Mariss Jansons, Daniel Barenboim, Gustavo Dudamel…
On this occasion, the German Christian Thielemann is revalidated, a face that will be familiar to the general public, since he assumed that same Concert on January 1, 2019. On the other hand, his career as an heir to the Germanic tradition is worthy of reference, both for his artistic achievements – this season he ends as head of the Staatskapelle Dresden to replace Daniel Barenboim as head of the Staatsoper Unter den Linden in Berlin starting in September – and for his temperament and inflexible character, which at specific moments cost him his good relationship with institutions such as the Deutsche Oper, the Vienna Philharmonic or the Bayreuth Festival.
According to tradition, the music in this concert is mainly from the Strauss family: Johann Strauss Sr., his sons Johann, Josef and Eduard, and his son, Johann Strauss III. But works by his contemporaries are introduced, such as that Archduke Albrecht March composed in 1884 by Karl Komzák in honor of the field marshal, Archduke Albrecht von Österreich, which has been a classic of German military bands for years.
This is how the Vienna Philharmonic concert will begin, for which the orchestra and Thielemann have selected nine pieces that have never before been performed on this stage. Among them are, in addition to the aforementioned March of Archduke Albrecht, the Polka Figaro by Johann Strauss Jr., the polka High Spring by Eduard Strauss and the New Year’s gallop Glædeligt Nytaar! (Happy New Year!) by Danish composer Hans Christian Lumbye.
But the Quadrille in A major will also be introduced WAB 121 by Anton Bruckner, a composer who makes his debut in the New Year’s program as a celebration of his bicentennial. Thielemann recorded the complete symphonies of the Viennese Romantic composer with the Vienna Philharmonic. And it will also dominate the interval of the concert, which will be presented by the ORF (Austrian public radio and television) with a film by Felix Breisach that traces the composer’s life between Ansfelden, Linz and Vienna, a moment that will feature the participation of two children of the choir of Saint Florian’s Abbey.
Those more than 55 million European viewers who annually follow the New Year’s Concert create a community of which to feel part. In today’s liquid societies, cultural traditions can function as a center of gravity and escape for once from the multitudinous passion for football. Furthermore, tuning in every January 1 with an orchestra that almost two centuries later (it was founded in 1841 by the Prussian composer Carl Otto Nicolai) maintains an extraordinary level is also a way to reconnect with the roots of European culture.
Traveling to the past with that invariable musical proposal of the Vienna Philharmonic is a way of not losing sight of who we are and where we come from: Clemens Krauss and the Austrian orchestra inaugurated this event on December 31, 1939 with a packed Golden Hall of the Musikverein of swastikas. And it must be said that they did not exactly disappear once the Second World War was over. In 1943, 123 musicians were Nazi militants (more than 50%) and two had been members of the SS. In 1938, 13 active musicians in the orchestra were expelled for being Jews or having Jewish roots. Of them, five were murdered during the Holocaust. What is now experienced as a celebration of common roots was offered for years as an exaltation of Austria’s cultural excellence through operettas and dance works of the 19th century.
Johann Strauss Jr. composed that 1867 hit titled The Blue Danube, inspired by a poem by Karl Beck that sang of the beauty of Vienna (or a woman) “on the banks of the Danube, the beautiful blue Danube.” And he was nicknamed the King of the Waltz for his way of revolutionizing that peasant dance, based on an ancient and slow Tyrolean rhythm, until elevating it to the dance of the Habsburg Imperial Court. ‘Walzen’ means to turn in German. So the television broadcast of the New Year’s Concert added, starting in 1959, pre-recorded ballet scenes. This time choreographer Davide Bombana (Milan, 1958) will be in charge of spinning the dancers of the Vienna State Opera Ballet to the rhythm of The Blue Danube, who was already invited to the 2018 edition. This time with costumes from the Austrian costume designer Susanne Bisovsky, a disciple of Vivienne Westwood who worked with J.Ch. by Castelbajac and Helmut Lang, and which has been lavished under the label of “Viennese Chic”. On this occasion she draws inspiration from history, borrowing traditional costume and folklore with typical floral designs.
Through ballet you have access to places in Vienna that are worth a visit, even if it is virtual. Once again, dance will occupy places where it has never been performed before: soloists Ketevan Papava and Eno Peçi will dance the Ischl Waltz, by Johann Strauss Jr., around the Kaiservilla in Bad Ischl, the summer residence where Francis Joseph I he met Sissi; a way to celebrate that Bad Ischl will be one of the three European capitals of culture in 2024. Five other couples will dance to the tune of the Citizens of Vienna waltz, by Carl Michael Ziehrer, through the halls, the library and the gardens with ponds with water lilies of the Rosenburg Castle. All of this was filmed last August.
It is no secret that the Vienna Philharmonic has opted for a maestro who feels more in tune with the stormy character of the Bavarian Richard Strauss (Elektra, Salomé, Der Rosenkavalier…)  than with the musical lightness of the family Strauss (those from Vienna). He evidenced this when he conducted this New Year’s Concert in 2019, choosing control and quality over fantasy. It is sobriety that on other fronts is much appreciated, it could be in that context a reason for discouragement and, therefore, for criticism from the sudden music lovers of the January 1st holiday. They are allowed.
The Austrian public television ORF has been broadcasting the traditional New Year’s Concert for 66 editions, already reaching a hundred countries around the world. The team of fifteen cameras distributed throughout the room will, as usual, review the details of the neoclassical architecture and the Greek-inspired elements (Apollo and the muses on the ceiling or the caryatids), as well as the floral motifs with the that decorates the space in this palace inaugurated in 1870 at the proposal of Francisco José I.
Those who occupy the seats in the first rows do not have to be well-known faces (and who knows if they have really paid the more than a thousand euros that one of those seats costs or if one of them has been invited), but the walk of the cameras around the room gives you the opportunity to check if you really enjoy the concert. Especially after having to go through so many filters and waiting lists: the draws among applicants to attend the event in person are held at the beginning of the year. You know: as soon as it is announced (at the end of the Concert) who will be the next guest conductor for 2025, admissions are opened for the corresponding draw…
The Vienna Philharmonic, which this year performs the polka-mazurka The High Fountain to display its interest in environmental protection (they have donated 100,000 euros to the Austrian Alpine Association), does not seem sensitive – or even permeable – to equality of sexes. In 2020 there were only 15 women among its 145 members, a figure that has recently risen to 24!, including the concertmaster, Albena Danailova (Sofia, 1975), although she herself has stated that in the field of classical music the gender issue “is not at all a primary issue.” This dominant discourse has become especially unsustainable in recent years due to the institution’s stubborn resistance to eventually inviting a female batonist to conduct the New Year’s Concert. The statements of its president, Daniel Froschauer, made people talk last year when he justified this fact by claiming that it is a concert that is too complicated for “someone with no experience” to direct it. And this year he covered himself in glory by speaking out on the reasons why in 84 years no piece by a contemporary composer of the Strauss dynasty has been included in the program. There are some, she acknowledged, “but we’re not there yet.”
Since 1958, the Vienna Philharmonic has offered three tips at the end of each musical matinee on January 1: a fast polka (this time the Joke Polka, by Josef Strauss), the famous The Blue Danube, by Johann Strauss Jr., and finally the Radetzky March, by Johann Sr., clapped by the audience that fills the room. What they are cheering is Commander Joseph Radetzky von Radetz’s victory over the Piedmontese in 1848 and the restoration of Austrian rule in northern Italy. Even more: until 2020 they cheered him on with even more victorious arrangements by a prominent member of the Nazi party since 1932, the composer and conductor Leopold Weninger, who in 1914 published an orchestral arrangement of the Radetzky March in Leipzig, with more winds and percussions from those that worked in the original. It only took the Philharmonic 76 years to decide to change its arranger, since the piece has been offered since the 1946 edition, the year in which the so-called Johan Strauss Concertos were renamed the New Year’s Concert. Yes, the Nazi Minister of Propaganda, Joseph Goebbels, had hidden the Jewish origins of the composer whose work was part of the Nazis’ leisure…
