This delightful collection celebrates the Vienna Philharmonic and demonstrates how the persistence of tradition can triumph even over some very strong podium personalities. The tradition of New Year’s Concerts in Vienna is relatively recent, dating from 1939 when Austria had been absorbed into greater Germany and a program of the Jewish Strauss family was a relatively daring display of artistic independence. In any event, the recordings here range from Clemens Kraus’ 1951 Pizzicato Polka to Seiji Ozawa’s On the Beautiful Blue Danube from 2002. But whether the conductor is Abbado, Boskovsky, Karajan, Maazel, Krips, or Muti, it’s the orchestra that steals the show. Certainly we can hear how it has improved since the immediate post-war period, but it’s the rhythm and phrasing that give these performances their echt-Viennese character. And while the sonic quality is necessarily variable (and not necessarily better in digital), if you are looking for a single collection of music from the New Year’s concerts, you simply can’t go wrong here.
