This annual concert in Vienna is music’s grandest New Year’s celebration. To ring in 2019, it was Christian Thielemann’s turn to take the baton. Here, the Vienna Philharmonic is in blistering form, playing music by Johann Strauss II and various family members with the sort of swagger and joyful lilt that only they can. The Radetzky-Marsch and Blue Danube get their yearly look-in (you won’t find finer performances of them than the annual ones from Vienna’s Musikverein concert hall), but the additional mix of lesser-known polkas, marches, and waltzes adds up to a program that fizzes with fun.
- Berlin Philharmonic & Herbert von Karajan
- Nikolaus Harnoncourt & Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra
- Chorus of the Vienna State Opera, Vienna Philharmonic, Philharmonia Orchestra, Philharmonia Chorus, Vienna State Opera Orchestra, Tonhalle-Orchester Zürich, Vienna Volksoper Orchestra, Clemens Krauss, Otto Ackermann, Rudolf Moralt, Victor Reinshagen & Anton Paulik
- Leonard Bernstein & New York Philharmonic
- Claudio Abbado & London Symphony Orchestra