VIENNA – The legendary New Year’s Day Concert at Vienna’s Musikverein is enjoyed annually by millions around the world on television and radio. On January 1st, 2002, Maestro Seiji Ozawa, currently in his 27th season as Music Director of the Boston Symphony Orchestra, took the helm for this prestigious concert for the first time.
It was an especially fitting year for him to do so, as Ozawa is the Music Director-designate of the Vienna State Opera and will depart from his role in Boston at the end of this season.
Philips producers worked night and day to release the recording worldwide as soon as possible and, for the first time, the New Year’s Day recording is available in the first month of the year. The CD, which is available in stores across the U.S. as of January 29th, has already been certified Platinum in Austria and went straight to No.9 on the pop album chart in Japan where the media has labeled it the “New Year Phenomenon.”
A highlight of the musical calendar, the New Year’s Day Concert from Vienna enjoys a wide and ever-growing audience, largely due to the popular television broadcasts. The delightful, traditional program includes some of the most popular waltzes, polkas and marches ever written and the 2002 concert is no exception. Featured on the recording are works by Johann Strauss Jr. and his relatives, including the Overture to Die Fledermaus, “The Blue Danube,” “Tick-Tock Polka,” “Watercolours,” “The Dragonfly,” “Devil’s Dance” and the “Radetzky March.”
Richard Dyer of The Boston Globe attended the concert in Vienna and commented: “The concert was a tremendous success for Ozawa; more than one well-placed potentate of the musical world recalled the Viennese triumphs of Leonard Bernstein, who became the city’s hero. ‘It is not a standing ovation like this every time,’ someone said; another veteran of many years of Viennese New Year’s concerts said, ‘The three great ones have been Herbert von Karajan, Carlos Kleiber – and now Seiji.”
