Christian Thielemann leads a New Year's Eve party in Vienna

BNearly seventy years ago, Elizabeth II, who died in 2022, addressed her subjects in the Queen's Christmas Message. Their Christmas messages may have been as similar to each other as the setting in which they were recorded – the tone of the lectures themselves, their linguistic gestures, and their vocal form had visibly changed, as a research project at LMU in Munich has been able to show. The King's vocal production had moved “from the 'upper class variant' to mainstream standard pronunciation”.

For almost as long as the Queen's Christmas celebration, the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra has been a radio and television presence on New Year's Day with its program of waltzes, polkas, marches and quadrilles. The way they interpret this specific music has also changed significantly over the decades – according to the results of a study conducted by the Institute of Music Acoustics at the Vienna University of Music.

He is removed from everyday life

For example, some passages in “Kaiserwalzer” sounded “quite military” on early recordings, but today they are played in an “innocuous and more rounded” manner. Movement towards popularity – in the British Royal Family as well as the Austrian Waltz King. However, New Year's parties, like the monarchy, temporarily lift people above the everyday and banal through beautiful images and melodies.

When the most famous concerts are broadcast from the Music Club's flower-bedecked golden hall, they are enjoyed by audiences of millions around the world every year. Now Christian Telemann had the opportunity for the second time to shape this Viennese music to his liking. After his debut in 2019, it was sometimes said that the Berlin-born conductor handled the whole thing in a very Prussian way and it was not necessarily understood as a prize. However, if this trait is intended to describe extremely precise and balanced music making, it certainly applies to his second concert of the new year.