Delibes Sylvia – Pizzicati Hellmesberger II Vielliebchen, Op 1 Lanner Die Romantiker, Op 167 E Strauss Helenen Quadrille, Op 14 J Strauss I Carolinen-Galopp, Op 21a. Radetzky March, Op 228 J Strauss II Egyptian March, Op 335. Seid umschlungen, Millionen, Op 443. Stürmisch in Lieb' und Tanz, Op 393. Waldmeister – overture. Klipp-Klapp, Op 466. Tales from the Vienna Woods, Op 325. By the Beautiful Blue Danube, Op 314 Josef Strauss Friedenspalmen, Op 207. Bouquet-Polka, Op 188. Neckerei, Op 262. Dynamiden, Op 173. Ohne Sorgen!, Op 271. Carrière-Polka, Op 200. Schabernack-Polka, Op 98 R Strauss Capriccio – Moonlight interlude

Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra / Daniel Barenboim

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The cue for the engagement of Daniel Barenboim as conductor of the 2014 concert was the imminence of the centenary of the First World War. Who better to engage, reasoned the Philharmonic, than a musician whose own West-Eastern Divan Orchestra embodies the idea of reconciliation between warring tribes and dynasties?

In the circumstances this was a very different event to the majestic outpourings of the 1987 Karajan concert or the 1989 and 1992 Kleiber concerts with their high-voltage charge. An undertow of melancholy, apt to the occasion and characteristically Austrian, pervades a programme which contains an unusual number of rarities thoughtfully assembled and shrewdly juxtaposed. There is delight at the very outset in an enchanting pot-pourri of themes from Offenbach’s La Belle Hélène (Eduard Strauss's Helen Quadrille) but the true mood is quickly established with Josef Strauss’s Friedenspalmen (‘Olive Branch’) waltz, music written in the wake of Austria’s defeat at the Battle of Königgrätz in 1866 after a futile internecine dispute with Prussia.

It’s no surprise that Josef Strauss shares equal billing with brother Johann in this 2014 concert. Many see Josef – frail of health, emotionally complex and dead at the age of 42 – as musically the most profound member of the Strauss dynasty. Which is not to say that Johann is incapable of touching the musical depths, witness his unusual take on Schiller’s words on the brotherhood of man, Seid umschlungen, Millionen, an exquisite slow waltz which he dedicated to his good friend Johannes Brahms, a man who never ceased to marvel at the subtlety and range of the Strauss family’s music.

This veil of melancholy permeates the entire programme, whether in the quiet musings of Tales from the Vienna Woods or Johann Strauss’s Egyptian March which Barenboim strips clean of comic-strip jauntiness. It is there too in the ‘Moonlight’ music from Richard Strauss’s Capriccio, a sesquicentennial tribute to the Vienna Philharmonic’s old friend and mentor that’s echoed minutes later by the playing of Josef Strauss’s waltz Dynamiden to which Strauss himself pays affectionate homage in Der Rosenkavalier.

In lesser hands this is a programme which might droop and drowse but Barenboim is a master musician possessed of that rare ability to take a great orchestra to the heights and hold it there whilst the players weave their own special spell. The concentrated beauty of the quiet playing, finely caught in the Sony recording, is a particular feature here.

On the debit side, Barenboim’s decision to clamber around the orchestra shaking hands with the players during the Radetzky March makes for a disappointingly ragged end. If this was a political gesture, it reveals a curious misunderstanding of the origins and significance of the Radetzky March.

The two-CD set comes in a standard edition and in a slightly more expensive de luxe version which includes the original 86-page programme, a minor work of scholarship, elegantly printed and finely illustrated. The DVD/Blu-ray of the concert, superbly filmed as ever by ORF, is due on February 4.

Richard Osborne