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FROM VIENNA: THE NEW YEAR'S CELEBRATION 2008
Premiered on January 1, 2008 on PBS (check local listings)
INTRODUCTION
Continuing its holiday tradition, GREAT PERFORMANCES returns to the stately splendor of Vienna's Musikverein for its 24th annual New Year's Day celebration with the Vienna Philharmonic and host Walter Cronkite. Georges Prêtre leads the world-renowned orchestra in a selection of buoyant Strauss Family waltzes, polkas, and marches. Also featured are festive ballets danced by the Vienna State Opera Ballet.
The world may not waltz as much as it once did, but each New Year's Day during the Vienna Philharmonic's annual holiday concert, the waltz again comes into its own. It is, of course, the dance most closely associated with Austria's capital and with Vienna's musical dynasty -- the Strauss Family.
The waltz grew out of a country dance called the Ländler, and was first brought indoors by Joseph Lanner, whose "Court Ball Dances Waltz" is included in the 2008 program. In partnership with a fellow fiddler, Johann Strauss Sr., Lanner formed a small orchestra to provide music for many of Vienna's cafés in the early part of the 19th century. It would be Strauss's eldest son, Johann Jr., however, who would take the charm and rustic simplicity of Lanner's waltzes and the lively, rhythmic vivacity of his father's and create a synthesis that brought this much-loved dance form to its zenith. In the process, he created the "symphonic waltz" -- a magical, extended concert piece typified by the most famous waltz of all, "The Blue Danube." This is music meant as much for listening as it is for dancing.
Although 2008 will be the 50th year that the annual concert, dominated by the works of Johann Jr., is telecast, it wasn't until 1986 that the musicians of the Vienna Philharmonic elected to vary the conductor who would lead them at each year's event. Herbert von Karajan, Claudio Abbado, Zubin Mehta, Riccardo Muti, Lorin Maazel, Seiji Ozawa, Nikolaus Harnoncourt, and Mariss Jansons are among the notables who have ascended the podium at the Musikverein on New Year's Day, and this year George Prêtre joins this select and illustrious group. He is the first French conductor to helm the concert and has included a few French-themed works in the program. Read an interview with the maestro to learn more about his relationship with the venerable orchestra in Dialogue. See if your favorite works by the Strausses are among those slated for the concert in the song list.
Special funding for FROM VIENNA: THE NEW YEAR'S CELEBRATION 2008 was provided by UniCredit Group.
Top banner photo: Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra
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photo: Conductor Georges Prêtre
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