At New Year’s in Vienna, Everything Old Is New Again

Every year, classical music fans can count on the Vienna Philharmonic to ring in the New Year with style — whether they are among the exclusive crowd that attends in person or one of the millions of viewers who tune in from over 90 countries.

The New Year’s Concert at the Musikverein, the concert hall that is the orchestra’s home in Vienna, took place on television and online in 2021 because of pandemic restrictions. For 2022, it returns live and will also be made available as a web stream on medici.tv. Daniel Barenboim conducts for the third time.

The program, consisting primarily of dance numbers by the Strauss dynasty, creates a festive atmosphere. But if the waltz rhythms are intoxicating, the numbers are laden with layers of history.

“Every work is like a microcosm,” said the Philharmonic’s chairman, Daniel Froschauer, of the period in the mid-19th century when this music emerged. “Austria was increasingly losing political power. The monarchy was in this sense dying away. This melancholy or yearning for the past comes strongly to the fore.”

The universality of these emotions, he said, is part of the annual concert’s “recipe for success.”

“Everyone carries a longing for something in the past — childhood, a homeland, a love. This music speaks to everyone.”

For Mr. Barenboim, the orchestra brings a “seriousness” to the works, which he considers “one of the most wonderful things about conducting them.”

“You would think that they know the style and take it lightheartedly,” he said, but that is not the case. “Not at all,” he added, noting that there is deep concentration during rehearsals.

At the same time, Mr. Barenboim said, certain turns such as the delay on the third beat of a Viennese waltz are “so deeply installed” that “you don’t really need to talk about them” because they are “deep in the culture.”

Such music, he said, “requires quite a lot of freedom” and “it is dangerous to either overdo or underdo it.”

Each year’s program is carefully designed by Mr. Froschauer and the general manager Michael Bladerer in collaboration with the conductor. Mr. Barenboim chose to include the Josef Strauss waltz “Sphärenklänge,” which he called “one of my favorite pieces of music in any context,” and the overture of the Johann Strauss Jr. operetta “Die Fledermaus.”

Mr. Barenboim said the process was collaborative and comfortable. “They give you the chance to suggest works that you would like to do, and they tell you some pieces that they would like you to do.”

Together with the orchestra’s four archivists, Mr. Froschauer and Mr. Bladerer also undertake research about the music’s historic context. Many of the works’ titles reflect everyday events or daily politics at the time.

Both the “Phoenix March” by Josef Strauss, which opens the program this year, and the Johann Strauss waltz “Phoenix Wings” are named for a company that manufactured carriages. The march was first performed in 1861 at a concert and garden fair to mark the opening of a new park in Vienna.

“All these works have a connection to something that happened in Vienna,” Mr. Froschauer said.

The Johann Strauss waltz “Morning Papers,” meanwhile, was composed in the 1860s for a journalists’ association, Concordia. The “Champagne Polka” (also by Johann Strauss Jr.) that enters in the second half of the 2022 program was written in 1858 upon the appointment of the diplomat Karl Ludwig von Bruck Jr. to St. Petersburg.

The coming program features two works by Joseph Hellmesberger Jr., who both performed as a violinist and conducted the Vienna Philharmonic in the late 19th century. The character piece “Heinzelmännchen” will be featured for the first time in the history of the concert.

Mr. Froschauer also said he considered it important to include Eduard Strauss, the youngest son of Johann Strauss, with two polkas. Several members Eduard conducted in the Strauss Capelle Vienna, the orchestra founded by his father, would go on to become members of the Vienna Philharmonic.

It was not until 1873, however, that the orchestra warmed up to the popular dance style of the Strauss’. The first program of exclusively Strauss works took place in 1925, under the baton of Franz Schalk.

The tradition of performing works from this canon for the new year, meanwhile, began in the early months of World War II. A concert of works from the Strauss dynasty on Dec. 31, 1939, served as a fund-raiser for a program of the Nazi Party.

Despite their association with the “darkest chapter” in Austrian history and that of the Philharmonic, these waltzes and polkas have also lived on as symbols of Viennese charm.

The televised version of the upcoming concert will feature a dance interlude of the Lipizzaner horses, a breed that has been trained since the days of the Hapsburg Empire to execute jumps and choreographed steps.

Mr. Froschauer explained the need to juxtapose different kinds of dance numbers — from a classic waltz such as “Morgenblätter,” to the fast polka “Kleine Chronik,” to the chorale-inflected waltz “Nachtschwärmer” of Carl Michael Ziehrer, which will have its premiere at a New Year’s Concert. “We try to keep things interesting for the orchestra,” he said.

That also includes bringing in a different conductor every year. A maestro such as Mr. Barenboim, who celebrates his 80th birthday next year, enjoys a relationship based on not only years of artistic partnership but also mutual friendship.

“When I’m with them, I feel part of them,” he said. “And I feel they are part of me — knowing very well that in a few days’ time, somebody else will be in a similar situation.”

Mr. Barenboim noted that because the self-governed orchestra operates without a general music director, “they have a sense of responsibility. And of historical significance. Therefore, they can treat the guest conductors in a spirit of admiration, knowing that nobody will get jealous about his colleagues.”

Mr. Froschauer called the New Year’s Concert “a sign of hope and love” — “that the whole world is a concert hall, that everyone can listen to the concert together.”

“It is something reassuring,” Mr. Bladerer added.

“Everyone knows they can turn on the television on the first [of January] and hear this music. That would also be important during a pandemic, in this difficult time.”