Vienna new year concert 1939(维也纳新年音乐会1939)

zhangyi 提交于 周三, 02/05/2020 - 15:36

History

There had been a tradition of concerts on New Year's Day in Vienna since 1838, but not with music of the Strauss family. From 1928 to 1933 there were six New Year's concerts in the Musikverein, conducted by Johann Strauss III. These concerts were broadcast by the RAVAG. In 1939, Clemens Krauss, with the support of Vienna Gauleiter Baldur von Schirach, devised a New Year's concert which the orchestra dedicated to Kriegswinterhilfswerk ('Winter War Relief'), to improve morale at the front lines. After World War II, this concert survived, as the Nazi origins were largely forgotten, until more recently.

The concert was first performed in 1939, and conducted by Clemens Krauss. For the first and only time, the concert was not given on New Year's Day, but instead on 31 December of that year. It was called then a special, or 'extraordinary' concert (Außerordentliches Konzert). Johann Strauss II was the only composer performed, in a modest program: