New Year's Concert 2001

The Vienna Philharmonic’s annual New Year’s Concert is an event that’s steeped in tradition; since 1939 the beautifully ornate (and acoustically challenging) hall of Vienna’s famous Musikverein has reverberated to the sound of the musical legacy of Johann Strauss and his sons, celebrating the arrival of the new year with some of classical music’s best-loved and most-heard melodies.

Johann Strauss and his sons (Johann II and Josef) between them created some of the defining moments of light classical music. Between them they wrote hundreds upon hundreds of pieces, much of their output in the form of the waltz or the polka - and while you may not be especially familiar with these composers’ works, you’ll at the very least know the "Blue Danube" waltz well, not least due to its extensive use in Stanley Kubrick’s film 2001: A Space Odyssey.

Make no mistake - this is not “serious� classical fare, and it’s not earned its place in the “light music� idiom without good reason. The Strauss played at the New Year’s Concerts is warm, melodic, and very, very unassuming, loaded with memorable tunes but somewhat short on emotional substance. It is, in other words, the perfect musical accompaniment to the dawn of a fresh year, and for an audience still coming down from the excitement of the previous night. Don’t expect the depth of Mahler or the raw emotion of Beethoven here - this is the classical version of cotton candy. But how could this be rewarding at all, you ask? Well, the Strauss family’s knack for economical scoring and their almost total insistence on simple, hummable melody is hard to resist, even for the most adventurous of classical music listeners - it all sounds so happy, something that everyone needs a little bit of as we head into the 21st century. Put simply, the New Year’s Concert is supposed to be untaxing fun, a mission accomplished well in this year’s performance.

Since 1987, a different conductor has taken charge of the New Year’s Concert each time. For the 2001 event, Nikolaus Harnoncourt takes the conductor’s podium with both confidence and an appropriate sense of fun - it’s perfectly apparent that neither he nor the Vienna Philharmonic are taking the event too seriously, though make no mistake, there’s nothing but the highest calibre of performance on offer here. This material, though, doesn’t present any undue challenges to the experienced maestro and his orchestra, and consequently they tackle the collection of works here with a sense of pure fun - fun which manifests itself quite literally at the end of the performance, with a green-smoke-shrouded Satan appearing in the middle of the orchestra during Johann Strauss II’s Lucifer Polka, and Harnoncourt turning around to conduct the huge audience in a bout of hand-clapping during the final encore, having already humorously told them off for clapping prematurely at the beginning of the inevitable go-round of the famous Blue Danube. Three fairly unremarkable pieces from composer Joseph Lanner are also included in this year’s concert.

Director Brian Large takes some apparent cues from Ernst Wild’s direction of Herbert von Karajan’s performance films (some of which are available on DVD through Sony Classical), but expands on that admirable coverage of conductor and orchestra by also focussing on the Musikverein itself with its ornate architecture, lavish paintings and the many elaborate floral settings strewn around for the occasion. It’s not easy to give classical performance the visual momentum it deserves when capturing it for television, but Large has come very close to getting it perfectly right here. The overall effect is close to ideal - indeed, even a classical fan with a distinct penchant for the more adventurous side of the genre (like this reviewer!) will find the 108 minutes of this performance perfectly entertaining.

It’s also worth pointing out that this performance was held this year, on New Year’s Day - a mere couple of months ago. Teldec and Warner Vision deserve applause not only for getting this DVD version out so quickly, but also for its exceptionally high quality.

The video here is best described as “spectacular but flawed�. Shot in hi-def for, we’d guess, a couple of reasons (the involvement of the technically pioneering Japanese network NHK and of course the intention to release the results on DVD), this performance is presented in 1.78:1 (16:9 enhanced) at a very high bitrate spread evenly over two layers. Colour and detail are displayed with startling clarity, with close-up shots of individual players revealing the texture of their instruments in fine detail. Indeed, it’s not hard to suspect that the many shots of the flowers arrangements and the Musikverein itself were put there specifically to show off just how high-res things can be…!

Unfortunately, such fine detail leads to a recurring problem with aliasing, and though this is largely a problem with shots of the building and its surrounds, it does affect shots of the orchestra at times. It’s hard to tell, even with close examination, whether or not this is a problem with the MPEG encoding itself; this reviewer’s best guess is that the encoder used is largely to blame here.

As a whole, though, the video quality is excellent - while the aliasing problem is fairly frequent, it’s confined to shots with lots of intricate detail (in other words, mostly wide shots) and just when you’re starting to worry about the video quality, the vision cuts to a close up of, say, a cellist, and you gasp at the breathtaking clarity and definition of it all. Needless to say, the hi-def version of this concert must be a sight to behold.

Two audio tracks are provided - a 448kbit/sec Dolby Digital 5.1 track and a stereo 16-bit 48KHz PCM track. And while those with a 5.1 fetish may disagree on grounds of aural fireworks, it’s the PCM track that’s the audio of choice here. While the Dolby Digital track offers more channels and a more elaborate soundstage, it suffers from a subtle but audible sense of artificiality, both in terms of frequency response and placement. The PCM track, meanwhile is outstanding - crisp, beautifully mixed and exceptionally refined, it’s the equal or better of anything possible on audio CD - and for once, it’s mastered at the same level as its audio-only equivalent, something that Sony should take heed of with their own classical DVDs. From room-shaking bass to crystalline top end, this is to say the least an astonishingly good audio track, and for this reason this DVD is a much better prospect than the corresponding audio CD of the same performance.

Aside from some text-based material (a brief history of the Musikverein, a brief history of the New Year’s concerts, some disc credits and a gratuitous plug for Teldec’s new DVD-Audio classical range), the main extra here is the inclusion of three “visualisations� of three of the pieces from the concert, labelled on the disc as “The Ballets�. These comprise two highly stylised ballet pieces and a very unusual “ballet� involving a race between two steam train engines. While obviously done with some care and very well directed and edited, for this reviewer these pieces were superfluous, and seriously verging on cheesy. If you’re a ballet fan, your mileage may vary.

While hardly the kind of classical music that challenges the mind and excites the spirit, this performance is a winner, capturing a real sense of enjoyment and fun and combining it with the typically perfectionist playing of the Vienna Philharmonic, an orchestra that’s obviously not averse to having a bit of a laugh when the moment suits. It’s been captured for DVD with skill, the insightful direction and often-dazzling visuals combining to make one of the best presentations of classical music delivered on DVD so far, and with sound quality to rival the finest audio CD. Teldec deserve high praise for their work here, especially considering the tight deadline; hopefully they’ll continue to release DVDs to this standard, and in the future include some more adventurous composers and their works. In the meantime, this one comes very highly recommended.