New Year's Concert Gives Nod to Olympics, Denmark

The London Olympics and Denmark's EU presidency will get a musical salute at the Vienna Philharmonic's New Year's concert on January 1, conducted for the second time by the Latvian Mariss Jansons.

Broadcast as every year around the world, the 2012 event will see the return of the Vienna Boys' Choir and, unusually, live performances by the Vienna Ballet, amid the usual Strauss waltzes and polkas.

Among the highlights to be performed at the Musikverein's lavish Golden Hall, the Copenhagen Steam Railway Galop by Danish composer Hans Christian Lumbye -- often known as the "Strauss of the North" -- will greet the start of Denmark's European Union presidency on January 1, organizers announced.

Next summer's Olympic Games in London will also get a nod with Johann Strauss's Albion Polka, dedicated to Queen Victoria’s consort, Prince Albert, and Josef Strauss’s Jokey-Polka (Jockey polka), a tribute to his favorite equestrian sport.

"The most watched classical concert on TV," this 72nd edition will be broadcast as every year in over 70 countries around the world.

It will also be available on video and radio live stream from Austrian broadcaster ORF at http://TVthek.ORF.at and http://oe1.ORF.at, with recordings due to come out again in record time in CD and DVD form within a matter of days.

"It is an incredibly positive energy that the entire world gets on this day," Jansons told journalists ahead of the concert.

"I have often conducted Strauss with other orchestras but it's not the same as with the Vienna Philharmonic," he said.

The 68-year-old Latvian, who conducted his first New Year's concert in 2006, follows in the footsteps of such celebrated conductors as Herbert von Karajan, Zubin Mehta, Seiji Ozawa, Riccardo Muti and Lorin Maazel.

Now chief conductor of the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra and Amsterdam's Koninklijk Concertgebouworkest, he has also performed with the New York and Berlin Philharmonics as well as the London Symphony and Philadelphia Orchestra.

Apart from the Danish contribution, the 2012 program features several firsts, from the Strauss brothers' Vaterlaendischer Marsch (Patriotic March) to Johann Strauss II's Rathaus-Ball-Taenze waltz and Entweder-oder! polka.

Inspired by a bloody war, the Patriotic March, which will act as opener, still has resonance today, the Philharmonic told journalists ahead of the concert.

"Even if it is trendy nowadays, for completely different reasons, to doubt in a unified Europe, we should look back at history on January 1 and see how much this continent already bloodied itself once," noted orchestra president Clemens Hellsberg.

Tchaikovsky's "Panorama" and waltz from "Sleeping Beauty" will also premiere at the concert, which includes works by Carl Michael Ziehrer and Joseph Hellmesberger, on top of the Strauss dynasty.

The Vienna Boys' Choir, returning for the fifth time after a 14-year absence, will perform the Tritsch-Tratsch Polka (Chit-Chat polka) and Feuerfest, while the ballet interludes, choreographed by Davide Bombana and usually pre-recorded, will be performed live from the Vienna's Belvedere Palace for the television broadcast.

As every year however, the concert's highlights will no doubt be the Blue Danube waltz and the Radetzky March, which traditionally bring proceedings to a close, accompanied by an audience clapping in time with the music.

The New Year's concert will start at 11:15 am (1015 GMT) on Sunday.