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Walter Cronkite Again Hosts PBS New Year’s Special From Vienna
The telecast marks Mehta’s fourth turn at the po-dium of the popular holiday concert, having led the celebration in 1990, 1995 and 1998. He has close links with both the Vienna Philharmonic, which made him an honorary member in 2001, and with the city itself. At age 18 he arrived in the Austrian capital to study piano, composition and double bass at the famed Academy of Music. For the January 1 concert, Mehta has selected a program of works by Johann Strauss Jr. and Sr., as well as Strauss Jr.’s brothers Josef and Eduard. He also has included the Viennese musical bon-bon, Light Footed Polka, a lilting work by Josef Hellmes-berger, the renowned conductor, composer and violinist who succeeded Gustav Mahler as the conductor of the Philharmonic’s concerts from 1901 to 1903. Other highlights include the overture to Strauss Jr.’s operetta Waldmeister, his Where the Lemons Bloom Waltz, City and Country Polka, and, of course, his immortal Blue Danube Waltz . This last, a Vienna New Year’s Concert tradition, will be danced live at the historic Schönbrunn Palace, the resplendent summer residence of the Hapsburgs. Lucia Lacarra and Cyril Pierre, of the Bavarian State Opera Ballet, join soloists from the Vienna State Opera Ballet and the Volksoper in choreography created for the occasion by Christian Tichy. The elegant costumes are by Christof Cremer. Also on the dance front, the telecast visits the grounds of Palace Hof, just outside Vienna and recently restored to its original Baroque glory, as the dancers glide through Josef Strauss’s wistful Mys-terious Powers of Magnetism Waltz. Strauss’s younger sibling is also represented by two popular polkas, the Irene Polka and Sailors Polka, while brother Eduard is spotlighted with the jovial No Brakes! Polka. Works by Strauss Sr. complete the program, with the Furioso Galop, Memories of Ernst, dedicated to 19th-century violin virtuoso Heinrich Wilhelm Ernst, and, of course, the traditional concert-closer, the hand-clapping Radetzky March.
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