Rigor and a great ability for lyrical preciousness would be the main virtues demonstrated on the podium by the Berlin maestro Christian Thielemann, chosen to conduct for the second time (the first was in 2019) the media New Year’s Concert in Vienna. The current conductor of the Staatskapelle Dresden and imminent replacement of Daniel Barenboim at the helm of the Staatsoper Unter den Linden (begins September 2024) once again takes on this repertoire of waltzes and polkas at the helm of the fabulous Vienna Philharmonic, with the pulse of iron and this great knowledge of the Germanic repertoire that characterizes him.
But if we have to look for any shortcoming in the director of the Salzburg Easter Festival, it would be in the area of ??fantasy and originality. Thielemann is not much of an innovator, and this is a trait that is possibly much appreciated by the Vienna Philharmonic when it comes to this traditional appointment with music. Date that in Spain can be seen from 11.15 a.m. on the 1st on La 1, TVE Internacional Europa, Radio Nacional, Radio Clasica and RTVE Play. From the Musikverein in Vienna, it is broadcast worldwide by Austrian television ORF in co-production with the European Broadcasting Union (EBU), reaching more than 55 million viewers in Europe alone.
At the age of 64, Christian Thielemann is currently among the big names in the international firmament of orchestral conducting. The Vienna Philharmonic has not stopped half-heartedly this time and has aimed for a solid heir to the Germanic tradition, a great specialist in Beethoven, Wagner, Brahms, Bruckner or Richard Strauss for whom the orchestras of his country fight. A student of Herbert von Karajan, Thielemann is also a born storyteller and a great conductor of voices, as he has already demonstrated in Bayreuth and previously at the Deutsche Oper Berlin or the Munich Philharmonic, two institutions from which he left not without controversy.
But this could be a big year for Thielemann, who is still reeling from the setback of not being chosen by the Berlin Philharmonic to replace Sir Simon Rattle in 2018. At the time, Angela Merkel’s favorite seemed to qualify for occupy the podium in his city of what is considered the most extraordinary of symphony orchestras, but the one who took the cat to the water was the Russian Kiril Petrenko. That’s why Unter den Linden can now be a way to get out.
Of course, he knew how to get ahead of the Berlin Philharmonic during his visit to the Sagrada Familia, when the pandemic damaged the orchestras’ Ferrari plan. This is how the Barcelona public could see him conduct this same Vienna Philharmonic in 2021, but among the iridescence of the stained glass windows of Gaudí’s temple.
Thielemann is a man of some controversy: accused of being a Nazi for his conservative ideas combined with total opposition to political correctness, he has had to shake off the label of racist and continuation of an old order, between other things because of the passion for Wagner and other composers of nationalistic exaltation. In the past there was talk of his insistence on pointing out Barenboim’s Jewish origins, although the current rapport between the two directors would belie this.
The New Year’s Concert is conducted, this time, by a talent who as a child learned to sing before speaking. Thielemann was the only child in a wealthy West Berlin family, with a pharmacist mother and metallurgist father, from whom he inherited his perfect hearing; both amateur pianists. At such a young age, he preferred to go to the Berlin Philharmonic rather than stay at home with “my nanny from East Prussia – he would say -, he wanted to hear the music of an orchestra, the play of colors, those waves of sound in which a you could get lost and find yourself again”. He learned piano, violin and viola. And as a teenager he was appointed assistant to his idol, Karajan.
The young musician would have fallen in love with this artist, who, among other things, was characterized by being constantly aware of his own image and aesthetics. “Until I saw Karajan, I didn’t have the impression that directing can also be a really beautiful organic show,” Thielemann would say. This passion for Karajan, who had a youth close to the Nazi party, has caused him more than one headache.
The public will be able to appreciate its particular aesthetics on the podium in the Golden Hall of the Musikverein, a palace inaugurated in 1870 at the proposal of Francis Joseph I of Austria. Baron Theophil Hansen, of Danish origin, opted for a neoclassical architecture that would compete with the grandeur of the State Opera. Hence the Greek references: Apollo and the muses on the ceiling, the caryatids in the room, the columns on the outside… Selected by lottery, the public has paid between 35 euros and around 1,200 euros to attend (from 20 to 495 if you have had the general essay).