New Year’s Concert 1992

After this sensational, rousing concert, the most popular event of the year for the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra, the entire Austrian media were unanimous: this was a one-of-a-kind sensation. Broadcast in 25 countries and reaching a potential viewership of a billion viewers and listeners, the concert carried the spirit of Vienna and its most popular son, Johann Strauss Jr., across the entire world. While the waltzes of Johann and Joseph Strauss (as well as an overture by Otto Nicolai) were certainly one reason for the concert's enormous success, it could not have reached this level of peerlessness without Carlos Kleiber. Known rather as an introspective musician, Kleiber proved in the 1989 New Year's Concert that he was a master of the light and bubbly as well. All of the works - from the Pizzicato Polka and the Tritsch-Tratsch Polka to the Blue Danube waltz and the Radetzky March - were played with such brilliance, virtuosity and overflowing good spirits that one Vienna daily titled the event "a miracle in 3/4 time."