by Natalia Di Bartolo – Maestro Riccardo Muti conducts the Vienna Philharmonic for the 2025 New Year's Concert at the Musikverein in Vienna.
At the New Year's Concert in Vienna, the end “review” it is not suitable, because it is impossible for anyone “evaluate” quality and success of a show of this level and such tradition. Moreover, when on the podium is our wonderful Maestro Riccardo Muti, seraphic, smiling and relaxed as never before, in his seventh presence at the helm of the stupendous Wiener Philharmoniker Orchestra, for which the writer has had an indispensable weakness, since the first sorties at the Wiener Staatsoper, during the profitable superintendence of Dominique Meyer.
What to write, then, about a cosmopolitan orchestra that has a very particular and personal sound, that needs to be listened to live, that chooses the Maestro to be directed by, that manages to drag the listener from the angelic paradise to the deepest abysses, which has a string section never heard like this in the world, especially when it comes to double basses, and lets listen to divine brass instruments…without detracting from the splendor of the sound of everything else? Rhetorical question. So it is obvious, as has been said again and again, that Maestro Muti has a particularly intense passion for this extraordinary team.
The understanding between the Wieners and our Italian Director is evident: not only to the attentive eye, which evaluates the measured gestures of the great Musician, barely mentioned, which receive an immediate and impeccable response from the entire orchestra, and which notices the The expression of bliss that illuminates the faces of the Wieners, but also and above all by the choice of program.
Day 1 January 2025, in the golden hall of the Musikverein in Vienna, packed beyond belief as if to make up for the past privations due to the pandemic, which involved Maestro Muti himself in 2020, the program was chosen with the usual caution and foresight by the our Director, who considers Viennese music to be anything but "easy" and who preferred several pieces by Johann Strauss Jr. also for the opening of the celebrations of the bicentenary of the birth of the Viennese author: waltzes, polkas, marches by Johann fils, but also by the other illustrious Strauss and not only, followed one another in the vortex that usually makes all the New Year's concerts from Vienna, in the dazzling setting overflowing with gold and fresh flowers.
INSTEAD every concert by M° Muti has a singularity and this year it was not only the choice of performance of a song written by a woman, Costanza Geiger, the Fernandus-Walzer, which made her the first female composer to be included in the Vienna New Year's Concert performance series, site decidedly masculine by tradition, but above all in the concertation and agogic progression of each piece.
The agogic question, obviously, was clearly evident in the most famous songs, which usually seem to become photocopies of themselves. Instead, never heard before, for example, a On the beautiful blue Danube op. 314, performed as an encore, so "different" from the usual, with a more mathematical than romantic slant, free from sappyness and preceded by a rebuke to the audience who cheered with enthusiasm at the first bars for having recognized them. The audience was silenced and amiably scolded in Italian by the Director, who then conveyed, again in Italian, his own and the Orchestra's best wishes and hypnotized the audience until the last encore. A varied, international audience, full of personalities who finally let themselves be directed to the Radetzky March with the same composure, but amused attention, as the extraordinary orchestral musicians.
An endless standing ovation concluded with the best wishes a New Year's Eve 2025 concert that will remain indelible in the memory of those present and of the millions of viewers who attended it from all over the world via television broadcasts and streaming.
Natalia Dantas
Photo Vienna Philharmonic / Dieter Nagl
Wednesday 1 January 2025
New year's concert
11:15 music club, Great Hall, Vienna, Austria
Directed by Riccardo Muti
Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra
Program: Johann Strauss I.Freedom March, op. 226, Joseph Strauss Village swallows from Austria. Waltz, op. 164, Johann Strauss II Demolition Polka. Polka francaise, op. 269, Johann Strauss IILagoon waltz, op. 411, Edward Strauss Airy and fragrant. Polka fast, op. 206, Johann Strauss II Overture to the operetta “The gypsy baron”, Johann Strauss II Accelerations. Walzer, op. 234, Josef Hellmesberger (Sohn) Fidel brothers. March from the operetta “The violet girl”, Constanze Geiger Ferdinandus Waltz, op. 10 [Arr. W. Dörner], Johann Strauss IIEither – or! Polka fast, op. 403, Joseph Strauss Transactions. Walzer, op. 184, Johann Strauss II Anne-Polka, op. 117, Johann Strauss II Gossip-gossip. Polka fast, op. 214, Johann Strauss IIWine, women and song. Waltz, op. 333