For the first time ever, this year I went into the Vienna New Year's Concert armed with a listing of the program contents!

NOTE: Just so you know, last week's "post tease" has been significantly filled out and filled in. (I sure didn't know going in that along the way we'd wind up having a mini-tribute to Josef Strauss!)

If you watched this year's Vienna New Year's Concert
on PBS, you saw the musical program start like so:

FRANZ VON SUPPÉ: Overture to Poet and Peasant
On Jan. 1, in the hallowed but for obvious reasons audienceless Great Hall of Vienna's Musikverein (seen here via screen cap from the telecast), Riccardo Muti conducts the Vienna Philharmonic in Suppé's ever-inspiriting Poet and Peasant Overture. It sounded more or less like this --

Vienna Philharmonic, Zubin Mehta, cond. Sony, recorded 1989

by Ken

I say it sounded "more or less" like that, because as noted above, while what we're hearing is indeed the Vienna Philharmonic playing Poet and Peasant in the Musikverein, it isn't from New Year's Day 2021 and it isn't conducted by Maestro Muti. As noted, it's from a 1989 Sony recording of Suppé overtures -- and a lovely CD it is! -- conducted by Zubin Mehta (seen here conducting the Israel Philharmonic in 2002). Under the subject heading of "Musical Vienna," Maestro Mehta's story is by no means unrelated to Maestro Muti's. Eventually we'll want to talk about this a little.

Now, you may recall that last week's "post tease" began with a musical question:

What link is there between this celebrated Strauss
polka and the 2021 Vienna New Year's Concert?

In which the famous Strauss polka went like this:


Vienna Philharmonic, Willi Boskovsky, cond. Decca, recorded in the 1960s-70s
[At the same time, we heard performances conducted by Stanley Black, Sir John Pritchard, and Peter Guth, which again you can easily enough check out. As a matter of fact, in a moment we're going to hear yet another.]


BUT FIRST, APOLOGIES (FOR A CHANGE) FOR THE DELAY
IN BEGINNING TO CONSUMMATE LAST WEEK'S POST TEASE