The New Year’s Concert, classical music’s most prestigious annual event, took place once again on January 1 under the gilded halls of Vienna’s Musikverein. Anton Bruckner made his entry into the philharmonic repertoire, usually dominated by the eminent Strauss dynasty.
An intangible landmark in an age of chronic uncertainty, this international musical event is always packed. The only departure from its reassuring program, which focuses on Johann Strauss, Johann Strauss II, Josef Strauss and Eduard Strauss and invariably concludes with The Blue Danube followed by the Radetzky March, is the addition of nine new works this year.
Among them, Anton Bruckner, whose bicentenary is celebrated in 2024, was played for the first time at the New Year’s Concert.
With some 50 million television and radio listeners in 90 countries, the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra’s New Year’s Concert, which takes place in the Austrian capital every year on December 30, 31 and, above all, January 1 (the only performance to be filmed live), is a must-see event for all classical music fans, layman and connoisseur alike.
Founded in 1939, but filmed since 1958, the Vienna New Year’s concert can lay claim, alongside the Eurovision Grand Prix, to the title of the oldest musical show to have been filmed, first on mondovision and then on Eurovision.
In the light of global geopolitical tensions, the 84th edition of the competition was dedicated to peace and tolerance. Symbolically, it was Christian Thielemann, the German conductor of the 2019 edition – thus preceding the confinement – who took over the baton of the prestigious orchestra.
Worthy heir to the German Kapellmeisters
A special feature of the New Year’s Concert is that each year, the musicians of the Weiner Phillarmoniker choose the conductor who will lead them on New Year’s Eve.
For the 2024 edition, their choice fell on Berlin conductor and protégé of the legendary Herbert Von Karajan Christian Thielemann. Therefore he succeeds another regular, Austrian Franz Welser-Möst.
This is Christian Thielemann’s second time conducting the Vienna Philharmonic.
He likes to present himself as the worthy heir to the Kapellmeisters (literally “chapel masters”), these all-round conductors (philharmonic concerts, opera, church services) attached to a German or Austrian city, in the purest Germanic tradition.
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Photo à la Une : © Philip Waldman/Musikverein
