New Year’s Eve Concert 1980

For his New Year's Eve Concert 1980, Sir Georg Solti returned to Munich's Herkulessaal, where he led the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra in another colorful potpourri of entertaining pieces. The concert opens with Richard Strauss' scintillating tone poem "Don Juan," the first work to manifest Strauss' mature individual style. The episodic work is based on Nikolaus Lenau's romantic version of the Don Juan legend. Its triumphant premiere in Weimar in 1889 established Strauss as one of the leading German composers of his time. "The Moldavia," part of Bedrich Smetana's vast symphonic cycle "My Fatherland," was composed in 1884 and has been synonymous with Czech music ever since. Despite the work's highly descriptive programmatic episodes, it is the sweeping and melancholy "Moldavia" theme that captivates all listeners. In his "Two Episodes from Lenau's 'Faust'," Franz Liszt, like Strauss above, also turned to Lenau for the first of his four "Mephisto Waltzes" (the episode is actually called "The Dance in the Village Inn"). It is a work which reaches heights of frenzy and sensuality. "Les Préludes" is one of Liszt's most famous symphonic poems. The title was drawn from a poem by Alphonse de Lamartine. It was first performed in Weimar in 1854, seven years before the first "Mephisto Waltz." The concert closes with Franz von Suppé's Overture to the drama "Poet and Peasant" (1846). Suppé, one of the first Viennese operetta composers, also wrote many overtures, songs, etc. for Viennese comedies in his day. This is one of his most lastingly popular pieces.