New Year's Concert 2012 -
Vienna Philharmonic / Mariss Jansons
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Hellmesberger Danse Diabolique Lumbye Copenhagen Steam Railway Galop E Strauss Carmen-Quadrille, Op 134 J Strauss I Sperl-Galopp, Op 42. Radetsky March, Op 228 J Strauss II Rathausball-Tänze (City Hall Ball Dances), Waltz, Op 438. Entweder – oder!, Fast Polka, Op 403. Tritsch-Tratsch Polka, Op 214. Albion Polka, Op 102. Freut euch des Lebens Waltz, Op 340. Pizzicato Polka. Persischer Marsch, Op 289. Unter Donner und Blitz, Op 324. An der schönen, blauen Donau, Op 314. Josef Strauss Vaterländischer Marsch. Jockey Polka, Op 278. Künstlergruss Polka-mazurka, Op 274. Feuerfest, Op 269. Brennende Liebe – Polka mazur, Op 129. Delirien Waltz, Op 212 Tchaikovsky Sleeping Beauty – waltz, Op 66 Ziehrer Walzer, Op 419
Rapid release of Vienna’s New Year Concert on disc has become as much a part of tradition as the concert itself. Conducted for the second time by Mariss Jansons, this year’s follows his first appearance in 2006. It begins with two items, the Vaterländischer-Marsch and Rathausballtänze waltz, that are in less than the front rank of Strauss compositions and which, in quoting the Radetzky March and Blue Danube respectively, look both backwards and forwards to items we know full well we shall hear later in the programme.
Josef Strauss’s majestic Delirien waltz and jaunty Feuerfest polka are among the more familiar highlights here, but overall the contributions of the Strauss brothers are unusually overshadowed. There’s curiosity interest in Eduard’s quadrille on themes from Bizet’s Carmen, as also in father Johann’s Sperl-Galopp, with its use of material from Rossini’s Guillaume Tell. However, with the two movements from Tchaikovsky’s The Sleeping Beauty seeming somewhat out of place, the concert’s highlights come rather more in such items as Ziehrer’s rousing Wiener Bürger waltz, Josef Hellmesberger’s Danse Diabolique, and Hans Christian Lumbye’s Copenhagen Steam Railway – this last marking Denmark’s accession to the EU Presidency. There’s a forward glance also to London’s Olympic Games in Johann Jnr’s Albion Polka.
Overall this does not, I feel, rank as a vintage year in terms of either programming or interpretative sparkle. However, with the Vienna Boys Choir contributing to two Strauss polkas, there’s still enough to appeal to those drawn towards this particular form of elegant music-making. Andrew Lamb
