"There are few concerts in the world that are awaited with as much excitement as the New Year’s Concert from Vienna. For 2022, the Vienna Philharmonic ushered in the New Year with a concert conducted by Daniel Barenboim for the third time at the magnificent Golden Hall of the Vienna Musikverein. The concert was broadcast to over 90 countries all round the world, reaching an audience of more than 50 million." -- WFMT Chicago
REVIEW:
At 80, Daniel Barenboim was making his third appearance at the event, in company with one other octogenarian from the past, Georges Prêtre in 2008 and 2010.
[This year the] entire Strauss dynasty was present in force...[the] orchestra, as always, played beautifully, and Josef Strauss’s Harmony of the Spheres Waltz, which Barenboim declared to be one of his favorites among all genres of music, received a refined, nuanced reading. Despite the conductor’s emphasis on serious music-making, is poise the last word in a Strauss waltz?
Without referring back to the 2014 concert, memory tells me that Barenboim’s conducting was more vigorous this year. The Polka schnells were fast, the brass and timpani unusually prominent, and the general mood not soporific. The tricky transitions in the Fledermaus Overture were handled skillfully (not that the Vienna Philharmonic needs a conductor for the piece). It has become the tradition, which Riccardo Muti carried to an extreme last year, for the conductor to do a minimum of baton waving out of respect for the orchestra’s incomparable skill in this repertoire. Barenboim followed suit[.]
-- Fanfare
