Live from Vienna 2016 New Year's Day Concert

This is BBC Radio 4 Rick, we stand by for viewers on BBC Two to join

us. Welcome to Vienna and the Golden

Hall of the Musikverein. I'm Petroc Trelawny and you join

us with the players of the Vienna Philharmonic on stage

and ready for the climax of their annual New Year's Day

concert, this year led by the Latvian conductor

Mariss Jansons. The street cleaners have been hard

at work getting rid of the evidence, the burnt-out fireworks and empty

bottles, left over from last night's celebrations, when tens of thousands

packed into the Graben to see The bells of Stephansdom providing

a confident greeting to 2016, with the Blue Danube playing out

on Austrian television - as it will in an hour

or so here in the Musikverein. Before that, the Vienna Boys Choir

will make an appearance on stage and the traditional appearance

of dancers from the Vienna State Mariss Jansons makes his way

to the centre of the stage here at the Musikverein,

to conduct the overture The Overture to Strauss'

operetta, A Night in Venice, which is performed at

the Volksoper here in March. The flowers surrounding the stage

provided by Vienna's muncipal gardeners and arranged overnight

by an army of florists. And Kim Moon one of the

distinguished guests this year. Not sure if any of the flowers came

from the Prater Park but that's The dancers from the LA, that was by

Eduard Strauss, Beyond All Bounds. One of the most beautiful

waltzes of all time next - Music of the Spheres,

by Josef Strauss, written in 1868, when Josef was director

of the Medical Association Ball. One of the great Viennese

musical tone poems. APPLAUSE

Marries Jansons conducting the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra this

New Year's Day in Music of the Spheres.

Jansons born in Riga, Latvia, son of the celebrated conductor

His career started when he was appointed assistant to the legendary

Evgeny Mravinsky at the Leningrad Philharmonic in 1971.

The Oslo and London Philharmonic Orchestras, the Pittsburgh Symphony

and Royal Concertgebouw in Amsterdam amongst the orchestras he has been

He is now music director of the Bavarian Radio Symphony

It was Jansons' particular wish to have the Vienna Boys Choir -one

It was Jansons' particular wish to have the Vienna Boys Choir.

The text seems very appropriate for New Year's Day.

"He who sings merrily and dances gleefully is armed

"Cheerfulness stirs the sluggish blood to new passion.

"What makes him glad makes everything good."

Schubert and Haydn both former members of the Vienna Boys Choir and

Mariss Jansons returns to conduct the Orchestra with the Vienna Boys

Choir. And the choir stay on the stage now

to perform a work by Josef Strauss, that makes good use of student songs

popular in Vienna in the second half Off On Holiday - Mariss Jansons

conducting the Vienna Philharmonic By the way, they may be

the Vienna Boys Choir, but since 1997, girls have also been

accepted by the Vienna Boys Choir. The children sing together

but the girls have their own choir too, under the patronage

of the famous Slovak soprano Six film milk -- female players in

the Philharmonic this year, slightly down on last year.

Ritter Pazman - Knight Pazman - was the result but it was not

a success, running for just nine performances here in 1892.

So, bitterly disappointed, he returned to operetta.

Within a few months he wrote Furstin Ninetta, which

Premiered at the Theater an der Wien, which, for the first time,

was lit with electric light, and the Emperor

It was a huge success, even if the work is pretty

It's a bizarre story, it's all set in at a seaside hotel

in Sorento, Italy, where the guests include a Russian born princess,

She enjoys dressing as a man and possesses a whole

Thankfully it all ends happily enough.

The section that came between Acts 2 and 3.

That was premiered on the night where the theatre was first lit by

electric light. Emile Waldteufel was always

delighted when he was described This is his reworking of his fellow

Frenchman Emmanuel Chabrier's A little fanning away

of the Spanish heat. The temperature is pretty high

inside here. If the Strausses were one famous

Viennese musical dynasty, We are going to hear a Ball Scene,

for Salon Orchestra by Joseph Hellmesberger Senior,

whose father had been one of the most popular Viennese

violinists of his time, and whose son became

conductor of this orchestra. The leader of the Orchestra there

and then the concert master is there. The Orchestra tell me how

many they enjoy working with January son, how clear he is giving a beat

and how passionately committed he is to Strauss.

The man who started the dynasty next, Strauss the father,

who had launched his orchestra in 1825, after splitting

He wrote many Galops. This includes the musical Sigh.

The Sigh Galop by Johann Strauss Senior, who had much to worry

His mother died when he was seven, his father drowned when he was 12.

His guardian made him apprentice a bookbinder here in Vienna,

but he found enough time to study viola and violin,

and in his late teens joined a string quartet,

which expanded into a string orchestra.

His son, Josef Strauss next. This is a very good example, a polka called

The Dragonfly. APPLAUSE

The Dragon Fly by Juan Strauss. -- Johann.

Next, TV viewers will meet again with the dancers

of the Vienna State Ballet, this time at the World Heritage Site

This time they are seeking love in the grounds of the Palace.

Jiri Bubenicek has created the Emperor waltz.

The Emperor Waltz. Mariss Jansons conducting the Vienna Philharmonic.

The costumes by the English designer Emma Ryatt.

Galloping and gunshots in our next work.

A hunt is in progress, the horns signalling the sighting

This is a polka that is taken from another Strauss operetta,

Cagliostro in Wien, a show about an adventurer and occultist,

Count Alessandro di Cagliostro, who was a conman and master

A polka from Johann Strauss's operetta Cagliostro in Wien,

another of those rather forgotten Strauss works.

Opened at Theatre an der Wien in 1875, hugely popular thanks

to its star, Alexander Girardi, great Austrian actor and tenor.

A monument to him stands near to here in the Karlsplatz

Korngold made a new version in the 1920s, and another

new version was premiered in Danzig, Gdansk in Poland, in 1941.

In fact, just after the Vienna Philharmonic New Year's Day

The tradition began on New Year's Eve 1939,

and then moved to New Year's Day in 1941.

What is now an event of such a joy and celebration was an invention

of the Nazis, who saw the sweet waltzes of Strauss

as being the perfect way of distracting the populace

from the increasingly-bleak state of the War.

Right from the beginning it was to reach a much wider

audience than simply those in the halls, with a live broadcast

on radio frequencies across the Third Reich.

A sober fact to remember in these days when this is a truly global

institution, broadcast to an audience of over 50 million

Then there are those lucky enough to be here. Like Ban Ki-Moon, the UN

Secretary General, and the Austrian president, his host today. I wonder

if they will have had to pay for their tickets, but they can cost up

to 1000 euros. There is a completed ballot that gives the chance to get

here. His first operetta for the Theater

an der Wien was called It was very much in the French style

popularised by Offenbach. His operettas often featured

a lively can-can, which is perhaps why Strauss decided he should

include a high-speed polka At The Double, fast polka

by Johann Strauss, one of the concert pieces he arranged

from the music to his first operetta, Indigo And

The Forty Thieves. Based on the One Thousand

And One Nights stories, So we are approaching the final

stage of this 2016 Vienna Philharmonic New Year's Day concert.

It is not billed in the programme but I'm not sure anyone will be too

surprised with what is to come. It was in 1873 that the relationship

between the Vienna Philharmonic and the Strauss family began,

when Strauss conducted his waltz Weiner Blut at that year's

Vienna Opera Ball, held Later that year he conducted them

in his Blue Danube Waltz. But there remained a certain

sniffiness from the orchestra This was after all the ensemble

of Brahms, Mahler, Richard Strauss. It wasn't until Clemens Krauss began

conducting an annual Strauss concert at the Salzburg Festival in 1929

that the Strauss firmly That relationship between Krauss and

the Strauss family continued until his death in 1954.

APPLAUSE Laughter

Mariss Jansons, 72-year-old Latvian conductor.

Conducting the Vienna Philharmonic in the Blue Danube waltz. Well,

there is just one more element of this concert that remains.

This is dedicated to a great military man, responsible for two

great victories at the end of his career as a soldier. He had 70 years

military service under his belt. You can give marks out of ten for the

clapping for the audience here. The tradition of clapping and staffing

feet goes back to 1948 by an Australian army band. That's when

the audience started clapping along. The Radetsky March, bringing

the 2016 Vienna Philharmonic Mariss Jansons bows to the audience

here in the sparkling golden hall, as the great tradition starts

the New Year in spectacular style. The New Year's Day concert

performance by the Vienna It's time for us to bid you farewell

from Vienna and wish you a safe,