A year after being overshadowed by the horror of the Asian tsunami, the Vienna New Year Concert of 2006 was again a wholly joyous occasion – all the more for celebrating two special events in the Mozart quarter-millennium and the first appearance at the concerts of Mariss Jansons, a popular choice for orchestra and audience alike.

Jansons marked the Mozart milestone with a fizzing Marriage of Figaro Overture, followed by a collector’s item in Joseph Lanner’s Die Mozartisten, a waltz on themes from The Magic Flute and Don Giovanni. These two items should surely have opened the programme, though, rather than following The Gypsy Baron’s entry march, which would have provided an ebullient close to the first half of the programme.

There’s more Mozart on the second CDin Johann Strauss’s Künstler-Quadrille, a musical switch embracing also Mendelssohn, Weber, Chopin, Paganini, Schubert, Beethoven and others. As usual the programme has a fair share of rarities to balance the familiar items and widen the appeal of the double CD. Jansons may linger a little overmuch in Josef Strauss’s Frauenherz (a tribute to the fact that the VPO now has female members?) but there is grace in his waltzes, fire in his marches and galops, and a welcome touch of humour in Eduard Strauss’s Telephone Polka and the Bandits Galop. Altogether Jansons keeps the music bubbling along and the instrumental textures emerging with extreme clarity and refinement. Not only the VPO but also the Emil Berliner Studios’ engineers are on top form.