New Year's Concert 2021 / Concert du Nouvel An 2021 Wiener Philharmoniker & Riccardo Muti

• Franz von Suppé (1819 - 1895):
• 1 Suppé: Fatinitza-Marsch 03:05
• Johann Strauss, Jr. (1825 - 1899):
• 2 Jr.: Schallwellen, Walzer, Op. 148 11:11
• 3 Jr.: Niko-Polka, Op. 228 03:05
• Josef Strauss (187 - 1870):
• 4 Strauss: Ohne Sorgen, Polka schnell, Op. 271 01:54
• Carl Zeller (1842 -1898):
• 5 Zeller: Grubenlichter-Walzer 07:41
• Carl Millöcker (1842 - 1899)::
• 6 Millöcker: In Saus und Braus 02:01
• Franz von Suppé:
• 7 Suppé: Dichter und Bauer: Ouvertüre 10:42
• Karel Komzák, Jr. (1850 - 1905):
• 8 Jr.: Bad'ner Mad'ln, Walzer, Op. 257 08:16
• Josef Strauss:
• 9 Strauss: Margherita-Polka, Op. 244 03:19
• Johann Strauss, Sr. (1804 - 1849):
• 10 Sr.: Venetianer-Galopp, Op. 74 02:03
• Johann Strauss, Jr.:
• 11 Jr.: Frühlingsstimmen, Walzer, Op. 410 07:39
• 12 Jr.: Im Krapfenwald'l, Polka française, Op. 336 04:12
• 13 Jr.: Neue Melodien-Quadrille, Op. 254 04:14
• 14 Jr.: Kaiserwalzer, Op. 437 13:04
• 15 Jr.: Stürmisch in Lieb' und Tanz, Polka schnell, Op. 393 02:16
• 16 Jr.: Furioso-Polka, Op. 260 02:22
• Neujahrsgruß / New Year's Address / Allocution du Nouvel An:
• 17 Applicable: Neujahrsgruß / New Year's Address / Allocution du Nouvel An 03:37
• Johann Strauss, Jr.:
• 18 Jr.: An der schönen blauen Donau, Walzer, Op. 314 10:54
• 19 Sr.: Radetzky-Marsch, Op. 228 03:13
• Total Runtime 01:44:48

Info for New Year's Concert 2021 / Concert du Nouvel An 2021

The prestigious concert will be conducted by Riccardo Muti for the 6th time (1993, 1997, 2000, 2004 and 2018) He has conducted the Vienna Philharmonic since 1971 in over 500 concerts in Vienna, Salzburg and around the world. With his sixth concert, he will be the most frequent conductor of this event since the legendary era of Lorin Maazel.

The Vienna Philharmonic’s annual event, a longstanding tradition that dates to the late 1930s, ushers in each New Year with joy and optimism. Known for masterful interpretations of Vienna’s signature waltzes, marches and polkas, the concerts draw sold-out crowds and attract a broadcast audience as large as 50 million across more than 90 countries.

The annual gala celebration has been led by the world’s most acclaimed maestros, including Clemens Krauss, Willi Boskovsky, Lorin Maazel, Herbert von Karajan, Claudio Abbado, Nikolaus Harnoncourt, Seiji Ozawa, Mariss Jansons, Georges Prêtre, Daniel Barenboim, Franz Welser-Möst and Andris Nelsons (on the podium for this year’s event). Muti, now Zell Music Director of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, has conducted the gala concert five times previously, in 1993, 1997, 2000, 2004 and most recently, 2018. Through 1986, only three conductors, Krauss, Boskovsky and Maazel, led the New Year’s concerts. In 1986, the Vienna Philharmonic musicians decided to rotate the post. With his sixth turn on podium, Muti will become “the busiest New Year’s Concert conductor since the legendary Lorin Maazel era,” wrote the Wiener Zeitung.

Since his 1971 debut at the Salzburg Festival with Donizetti’s Don Pasquale, Muti has maintained close ties with the Vienna Philharmonic, which he has conducted more than 500 times over his career, and Austria has become an important artistic homeland for the Italian-born maestro. “The relationship with the Vienna Philharmonic has always been a constant in my life,” Muti has said. “Vienna has always been my second home.”

In a 2018 interview with critic Dennis Polkow for WDCB-FM, Muti discussed the importance of the New Year’s Concert. “When you do the Viennese waltz, you must feel that it is a combination of life and death,” he said. “We must not forget that this music has a nostalgia, a melancholy, that comes from the period, that we are near the end of an empire. Not only do you feel this in the music of Bruckner, but the music of Mahler, and before that, in the music of the Strauss family: that something is about to disappear. And so it’s a combination of life and death, of smiles and tears together. That is the most difficult part of this kind of waltz.”

He continued: “Maybe this is one of the reasons on the first of January, this music enters into the homes of every county in the world and fits perfectly with the atmosphere of the New Year because there is a hope for the future that is coming, and yet a nostalgia for the past that is gone.”

Wiener Philharmoniker
Riccardo Muti, conductor

Riccardo Muti
Born in Naples, Riccardo Muti studied piano under Vincenzo Vitale at the Conservatory of San Pietro a Majella, graduating with distinction. He subsequently received a diploma in composition and conducting from the Giuseppe Verdi Conservatory in Milan, where he studied under the guidance of Bruno Bettinelli and Antonino Votto.

He first came to the attention of critics and the public in 1967, when he won the Guido Cantelli Conducting Competition – by unanimous vote of the jury – in Milan. In 1968, he became principal conductor of the “Maggio Musicale Fiorentino,” a position he held until 1980. In 1971 Muti was invited by Herbert von Karajan to conduct at the Salzburg Festival, the first of many occasions, which led in 2010 to a celebration of forty years of artistic collaboration with the Austrian festival. During the 1970s, he was chief conductor of the London’s Philharmonia Orchestra (1972 to 1982) succeeding Otto Klemperer. From 1980 to 1992, he inherited the position of Music Director of the Philadelphia Orchestra from Eugene Ormandy.

From 1986 to 2005, he was Music Director of the Teatro alla Scala and during his tenure he directed major projects such as the Mozart-Da Ponte Trilogy and the Wagner Ring Cycle. Alongside the classics of the repertoire, he brought many rarely performed and neglected works to light, including pieces from the eighteenth century Neapolitan school as well as operas by Gluck, Cherubini, and Spontini. Poulenc’s “Les dialogues des Carmélites” earned Muti the prestigious Abbiati Prize from the critics.

The long period spent as Music Director of Teatro alla Scala culminated on December 7, 2004, in the triumphant re-opening of the restored opera house with Antonio Salieri’s “Europa riconosciuta”.

Incredible his contribution to Verdi’s repertoire, he conducted Ernani, Nabucco, I Vespri Siciliani, La Traviata, Attila, Don Carlos, Falstaff, Rigoletto, Macbeth, La Forza del Destino, Il Trovatore, Otello, Aida, Un ballo in Maschera, i Due Foscari, I Masnadieri. His tenure as music director was the longest of any in La Scala history.

Over the course of his extraordinary career, Riccardo Muti has conducted the most important orchestras in the world: from the Berlin Philharmonic to the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra, from the New York Philharmonic to the Orchestre National de France, as well as, the Vienna Philharmonic, an orchestra to which he is linked by particularly close and important ties, and with which he has appeared at the Salzburg Festival since 1971.

When Muti was invited to conduct the Vienna Philharmonic’s 150th anniversary concert, he was presented with the Golden Ring by the orchestra , a special sign of esteem and affection, awarded only to a few select conductors. He conducted the prestigious and extremely famous New Year’s Concert in Vienna four times, in 1993, 1997, 2000, 2004.

In April 2003, the French national radio channel, France Musique, broadcasted a “Journée Riccardo Muti” consisting of 14 hours of his operatic and symphonic recordings made with all the orchestras he has conducted throughout his career. On December 14 of the same year, he conducted the long-awaited opening concert of the newly renovated “La Fenice” Opera House in Venice.

In 2004, Muti founded the Luigi Cherubini Youth Orchestra, which is composed of young musicians selected by an international committee from more than 600 instrumentalists from all over Italy.

Muti’s recording activities, already significant in the Seventies, range from symphonic music and opera to contemporary compositions , his recordings have won many prizes. The recording label dealing with his recordings is RMMusic (www.riccardomutimusic.com).

Riccardo Muti’s social and civic conscience as an artist is demonstrated by his concerts performed in places symbolising our troubled past and contemporary history, which he has conducted as part of “Le vie dell’Amicizia” (The Paths of Friendship) project, produced by the Ravenna Festival. Concerts were given in Sarajevo (1997), Beirut (1998), Jerusalem (1999), Moscow (2000), Yerevan and Istanbul (2001), New York (2002), Cairo (2003), Damascus (2004), El Diem, Tunisia (2005), Meknes (2006),Concert for Lebanon (2007), Mazara del Vallo (2008), Sarajevo (2009), Trieste (2010) Nairobi (2011), Ravenna (2012), Mirandola (2013) Redipuglia (2104), Otranto (2015), Tokyo (2016) and Tehran (2017) with La Scala Philharmonic Orchestra and Chorus, the Orchestra and Chorus of the Maggio Musicale Fiorentino, the “Musicians of Europe United” a group made up of the top players of Europe’s major orchestras and most recently with the Cherubini Youth Orchestra.

Muti has received Innumerable international honors over the course of his career. He is Cavaliere di Gran Croce of the Italian Republic and a recipient of the German Verdienstkreuz , he received the decoration of Officer of the Legion of Honor from French President Nicolas Sarkozy in a private ceremony held at Élysée Palace. He was made an honorary Knight Commander of the British Empire by Queen Elizabeth II in Britain. The Salzburg Mozarteum awarded him its silver medal for his contribution to Mozart’s music, and in Vienna was elected an honorary member of the Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde, the Vienna Hofmusikkapelle and the Vienna State Opera.

Russian President Putin awarded him the Order of Friendship, and the State of Israel has honored him with the Wolf Prize for the arts. He has received honorary degrees from many universities in Italy and abroad. The most recent was in 2014 when he received an honorary degree from Northwestern University in Chicago.

He conducted the Vienna Philharmonic in the opening concert for the celebrations of the 250th anniversary of Mozart’s birth in Salzburg at the Grosses Festspielhaus. In 2017 the continuous collaboration between Riccardo Muti and the Vienna Philharmonic will reach 47 years.

During the 2007 Whitsun Festival in Salzburg, Muti began a five-year project with the Cherubini Orchestra dedicated to the rediscovery and valorization of the operatic and sacred musical heritage of the Neapolitan School of the 18th Century.

In September 2010, Riccardo Muti became Music Director of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and he was named 2010 Musician of the Year by Musical America. In February 2011, he was awarded two Grammy Awards at the 53rd annual awards ceremony for his live recording of Verdi’s Messa da Requiem with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and Chorus. His recording won the Best Classical Album and Best Choral Performance awards. In March 2011, Riccardo Muti was selected as the recipient of the coveted Birgit Nilsson Prize, presented in a ceremony on October 13 at the Royal Opera in Stockholm in the presence of H.M. King Carl XVI Gustaf and H.M. Queen Silvia. In April 2011, he received the Opera News Award in New York and in May 2011 he was awarded Spain’s prestigious Prince of Asturias Prize for the Arts. The award was presented the following autumn in Oviedo at a grand ceremony chaired by H.R.H. the Prince of Asturias. In July 2011 he was named an honorary member of the Vienna Philharmonic and in August 2011 an honorary director for life at the Rome Opera.

In May 2012, he was awarded the highest Papal honor: the Knight of the Grand Cross First Class of the Order of St. Gregory the Great by Pope Benedict XVI. In 2016 he was honored by Japanese Government with the Order of the Rising Sun, Gold and Silver Star.

In July 2015, Riccardo Muti’s desire to devote even more to the training of young musicians was realized: the first edition of the Riccardo Muti Italian Opera Academy for young conductors, répétiteurs and singers took place at Teatro Alighieri in Ravenna.

Talented young musicians and an audience of music-lovers coming from all over the world took part in it. The Academy has the purpose to pass on to young musicians Riccardo Muti’s experience and teachings and to make the audience understand in all its complexity the path that leads to the realization of an opera.

The first edition focused on Falstaff was followed in 2016 by two editions, in South Korea and in Ravenna dedicated to La Traviata, and by the edition on Aida in 2017.

Booklet for New Year's Concert 2021 / Concert du Nouvel An 2021