FROM VIENNA: THE NEW YEAR'S CELEBRATION 2004 marks the fourth trip to the Vienna Philharmonic's New Year's Day podium for Maestro Riccardo Muti. Born in Naples in 1941, he has been music director of Milan's La Scala since 1986. He has long enjoyed a special relationship with the Vienna Philharmonic, which in 2001 honored him with its Nicolai Gold Medal for his "outstanding artistic contributions to the orchestra." GREAT PERFORMANCES: Why has the waltz proved so enduring in Vienna? Riccardo Muti: Well, a three-four movement has always been considered diabolical, because it constitutes an unstable situation, and is therefore contrary to nature. The waltz had its great moment thanks to Johann Strauss the father, and then his whole family, but also his rival and friend, Joseph Lanner, with whom he had formed a quartet at one point. Two thousand four is the bicentennial of the elder Strauss' birth, so we're including a number of his works, by the way. These composers produced waltzes that had the characteristics of little jewels, so much so that Brahms once said that he would give a good part of his own music in exchange for having written the opening of "The Beautiful Blue Danube." So the waltz assumed the form of an elevated art, but it still retained its popular roots, too. Waltzes were two-sided in other ways: they were full of melancholy, "Sehnsucht," as the Austrians say, but also joy, levity -- never an exaggerated giddiness, because that would have become shallow. GP: What is it that makes the way the Vienna Philharmonic plays waltzes so special -- so authentic? RM: Other orchestras can only imitate what the Vienna Philharmonic does with the waltz. Only someone who has lived in Vienna or spent a lot of time here can really understand this. There is a rubato that never stays the same, that fluctuates unpredictably. There's the little hesitation between the second and third beat, which is also never constant or mechanical. Other orchestras can only caricature these traits. The Vienna Philharmonic has a great deal of flexibility in this music, so that it becomes fused with the conductor's intention. You know, there's a recording of a number of versions of the "Radetzky March" [by Johann Strauss, Sr.], all with the Vienna Philharmonic, but led by different conductors, and no two are the same. There's no dogmatic approach to this music. Either you feel it or you don't. GP: So how does a non-Viennese-born conductor absorb a feeling for the waltz? RM: In my case, I have had a 33-year relationship with Vienna and with the Vienna Philharmonic. Twenty years ago, I would not have been able to conduct this music as naturally as I do now. It comes from doing Schubert, who represents the real soul of Vienna and whose world was also Strauss'. I am the only conductor to have recorded all the Schubert symphonies with the Vienna Philharmonic, and after that experience, they [the orchestra's musicians] said that from the way I did Schubert, they could tell that I would do Strauss waltzes well. They asked me to do the New Year's Day concert in 1993 and that was a great success, so I did it again in 1997 and then the great millennial concert in 2000. After that, I had decided not to do it again because that seemed like the ultimate New Year's concert, but they insisted. It's also worth remembering that I was born in Naples, and Vienna and Naples have very ancient links. They communicated as one capital to another, and many aspects of Viennese culture infiltrated Naples and vice versa. I'm not suggesting that as a justification because that would be ridiculous, but it may explain my affinity for this music. GP: This concert comes at a particularly intense moment in your life, doesn't it? RM: Right after the opening of the season at La Scala, then the reopening of La Fenice [the Venice opera house that burned down eight years ago and was reconstructed], and the Christmas concert at La Scala! GP: You mentioned the link between Schubert and Strauss. Can you say more about that? RM: The world of Schubert is the world of Vienna. His music has a seeming amiability, which is always marked by a vein of tragedy -- in his apparent smile there's always the presence of death. The same qualities exist in the music of Strauss and his colleagues, tinged also by the knowledge of an empire that is crumbling. Waltzes are full of nostalgia for the past. GP: Why is nostalgia and melancholy so integral to the musical culture of Vienna? RM: Maybe because this land sits at the very heart of Europe and so the Viennese is a combination of the German, the Italian, the Hungarian, and the Slovak. Viennese culture is really many cultures fused into one and it retains the yearning for a distant homeland. Also, we shouldn't forget that Vienna was the center of a marvelous empire and that its dominion shrank to the point where it is now a memory. GP: Strauss waltzes are still popular music in Vienna, aren't they? RM: You can hear them played in any tavern and wine garden -- in a completely different style, full of habits that would be completely inappropriate in the concert hall. But refining the waltz too much -- sweetening it excessively -- can also mean distancing it from its roots. Sometimes, there's a truth, an essence that comes out when you hear this music done by little bands, a trio or a duo in Grinzing [a wine garden on the outskirts of Vienna], even one that is playing rather apathetically. GP: Have you been able to learn something from hearing concert music done in this way? RM: Certainly. It's the same in Italy, especially in the south, where you hear village bands playing fantasies on Verdi themes. They're very far from being high art, but that rough music is full of truth, full of Verdi's DNA. You recognize certain tempi, certain forms of rubato, certain kinds of phrasing. GP: So do you think those scrawny beer-garden ensembles in Vienna might have preserved something of the way the waltzes sounded when the Strauss family performed them? RM: It's possible. Strauss had a little orchestra, and therefore had more mobility, performing in a more improvisatory style than we can today. An interview conducted and translated from Italian by writer Justin Davidson for GREAT PERFORMANCES Online. (Photo credits: Riccardo Muti [top banner], courtesy of ORF, and "The Blue Danube" score [left], courtesy of the Austrian National Tourist Office/Trumler.)