New Year’s Concert 2022 (CD review)

Music of Johann Strauss II, Josef Strauss, Eduard Strauss, and others. Daniel Barenboim, Vienna Philharmonic. Sony 19439962512 (2-disc set).

By John J. Puccio

You doubtless know that Vienna’s New Year’s Concerts have been going on since 1941 when the Vienna Philharmonic began its annual custom of offering them, and things haven’t changed much since then. EMI, RCA, DG, Decca, and now Sony are among the many companies that have recorded the VPO’s concerts over the stereo years, and in keeping with the orchestra’s tradition of having no permanent music director, they invite a different conductor to perform the New Year’s duties each year. The New Year’s conductors in recent times have included some of the biggest names in the business, including Herbert von Karajan, Carlos Kleiber, Willi Boskovsky, Claudio Abbado, Lorin Maazel, Seiji Ozawa, Georges Pretre, Nikolaus Harnoncourt, Mariss Jansons, Franz Welser-Most, Zubin Mehta, Gustavo Dudamel, Riccardo Muti, Christian Thielemann, Andris Nelsons, and in 2022 the orchestra invited Daniel Barenboim to return.

Maestro Barenboim (b. 1942) is both a noted pianist and a conductor. He has been the leader of such prestigious ensembles as the Chicago Symphony, the Orchestre de Paris, La Scala, and the West–Eastern Divan Orchestra, and he is currently the music director of the Berlin State Opera and the Staatskapelle Berlin. He has been making music for quite a long time, and the recordings I’ve always admired most from him are the late Mozart symphonies and piano concertos with the English Chamber Orchestra on EMI. They have hardly been equalled, so we know what to expect from him.

Here’s the current set’s line-up of selections for 2022:

Disc One:
Josef Strauss: Phonix March
Johann Strauss II: Wings of the Phonix Waltz
Josef Strauss: Die Sinene Polka
Joseph Hellmesberger II: Little Advertiser Galop
Johann Strauss II: Morning Papers Waltz
Eduard Strauss: News in Brief Polka
Johann Strauss II: Overture to Die Fledermaus
Johann Strauss II: Champagne Polka
Carl Michael Ziehrer: Night Owls Waltz

Disc Two:
Johann Strauss II: Persian March
Johann Strauss II: A Thousand and One Nights Waltz
Eduard Strauss: Greeting to Prague Polka
Joseph Hellmesberger: Elves
Josef Strauss: Nymphs Polka
Josef Strauss: Harmony of the Spheres Waltz
Johann Strauss II: At the Hunt Polka
Johann Strauss II: The Beautiful Blue Danube Waltz
Johann Strauss II: Radetzky-March

The last time I heard Barenboim conduct a New Year’s Concert was in 2014, and his conducting seemed to me back then lively, sensible, a little sentimental, and perfectly enjoyable. This time, maybe not quite as much. I sensed a small lack of spark to the music, a minor want of sparkle and excitement. Yet, as I say, minor deficiencies, with most of the program going well. Perhaps we should call it maturity. Most conductors as they age tend to slow down, if only a tad, and we often count these latter performances as “mature.” So be it.

Still, there is much lyrical grace to the Strauss waltzes. The familiar Morning Papers waltz, for instance, demonstrates a lovely cadence, an almost stately refinement often missing from the piece. Other, less familiar material, like the Wings of the Phonix are given a gravitas that elevates them to more important status. The galops and polkas that Barenboim intersperses with the waltzes add a note of exhilarating contrast to the proceedings, and most of the time we hear no noticeable slowdown of the conductor’s enthusiasm for the subject matter. Then, too, he handles Die Fledermaus overture with delicacy as well as passion.

The second disc opens with the Persian March, which carries an unexpected dignity with it in addition to the usual martial airs. And so it goes. The Harmony of the Spheres comes off well, too, with a sweetly paced, uncommonly relaxed lilt. Naturally, we couldn’t have a New Year’s Concert without the traditional closing: The Blue Danube waltz and the Radetzky-March. Barenboim’s Danube, it seemed to me, flowed a little lugubriously but maybe we can chalk it up to global warming. And the audience continues to have a good time clapping in time to Radetzky. So all continues right with the world, despite everything we do to upset it.

Producer Friedemann Engelbrecht and engineer Rene Moller and Wolfgang Schiefermair recorded the music live for Teldec Studio Berlin at the Goldener Saal des Wiener Musikvereins, Vienna, Austria on January 1, 2022. This time, it doesn’t sound as though the engineers recorded the orchestra quite as closely as usual. There is a little distance involved, and a good deal of hall ambience, resonance, reverberation. This, of course, enhances the experience of being at the concert live. After all, most people will want the album as a memento of the live event, audience noise and all, not as an audiophile demo record. In this regard, the sound is fine and serves its purpose. It’s certainly dynamic enough.

JJP

To listen to a brief excerpt from this album, click below: