Music for the New Year

Back in 2003 travel writer Patricia Schultz gave us a list of 1,000 Places to See Before You Die - an interesting if somewhat fatalistic title for an intriguing little travel book.  Though I've never totaled up my list to hers - there's an iPad app for it!!!!! - I have seen a fair bit of the world in the past 65 years.  I was 19 when I took my first trip out of North America and I've been travelling ever since - first with the airlines and then as a dip spouse.  According to my list on TripAdvisor - compiled I have to admit with a fading memory - I've visited 252 cities in 29 countries with a few of them on Ms Schultz's list.  I know for sure that one of them is Vienna - a city which I didn't like on my first visit but came to enjoy and love as I discovered it over the past few years.

The Großer Musikvereinssaal bedecked for the annual
New Year's Concert. The flowers that decorate the hall
are the gift of the city of Sanremo in Italy.

And though I've done most of the things she lists as "must do's" for any visitor to the city that Jan Morris likens to "a grandiloquent watchman of history,"  there is one glaring omission.  I've never attended the Wiener Philharmoniker's New Year's Day Concert - strangely Ms Schultz pegs the less well-known New Year's Eve concert as the thing to do but I think either one would fit on the list.

Well hopefully there is still time in the next few years to correct that gap in my list - perhaps coupled with another trip to my beloved Salzburg for Christmas?  In the meantime here's an excerpt from this year's concert where maestro Mariss Jansons - conducting his second New Year's concert - showed his prowess with the hammers?????

According to the Wiener Phil website if I want to get into next year's concert I'd better make up my mind in the next two days.  The lottery registration for January 1, 2013 starts on Wednesday and ends on the 23rd. And the tickets range from €30 to €940 - so I'd have to win two lotteries if I wanted a good seat!

The official website has a history of the concert - now in its 72nd year and broadcast to an estimated audience of 50 million in over 72 countries.  And there's an interesting posting on how the broadcast is done - famous British producer Brian Large has been most often in charge in the past few years.

01 January - New Year's Day