Vienna Philharmonic’s New Year’s Concert 2020 idiomatically conducted by Andris Nelsons is a breath of fresh air… more, maestro, please
New Year’s Concert 2020
Vienna Philharmonic conducted by Andris Nelsons Out now
Sony regularly rush-releases the New Year’s Day concert from Vienna, and I sometimes wonder why it bothers. But not this time. Andris Nelsons, making his debut in this series, presents an extremely idiomatically conducted concert, where nine of the 16 items before the traditional encores are themselves newcomers.
Beginning with Carl Michael Ziehrer’s exuberant overture to The Tramps, we also get three new Josef Strauss pieces, as well as a rarity, his Dynamiden waltz, all there to commemorate the 150th anniversary of Josef’s death.
He was a real polymath, with skills as a conductor, violinist, engineer and draughtsman, as well as being a composer of substance. He would surely be ranked alongside his brother Johann had he lived longer than a mere 42 years.
Andris Nelsons, making his debut in this series, presents an extremely idiomatically conducted concert, where nine of the 16 items before the traditional encores are themselves newcomers
It’s also, of course, Beethoven’s 250th. Greeted here with some Contra Dances composed in Vienna and, surprisingly, given all the light music Beethoven created, he too is making his first appearance at these concerts.
The fourth of them is a tune that haunted Beethoven, also featuring in his Eroica symphony, his Eroica Variations for piano, and his only ballet. It’s instantly recognisable.
Perhaps best of all is Franz von Suppé’s overture, Light Cavalry, a finer piece than almost anything the Strausses composed, and a fitting recognition given that it was the almost forgotten von Suppé, not Johann Strauss, who invented the Viennese operetta.
Most of these novelties are not as memorably tuneful as much of the better- known Strauss family music, but this concert is nevertheless a breath of fresh air. More, maestro, please.
Benjamin Bernheim Deutsche Grammophon, out now
Rating: 
This exceptional, 63-minute debut album from the French tenor Benjamin Bernheim is especially fine in the French repertoire selected. Indeed, arias from Gounod’s Faust and Roméo Et Juliette and Massenet’s Werther are as good as any on disc.
It’s a clever choice of items, even when Bernheim moves on to Italian stuff by Verdi, Puccini and Donizetti, and one of his party pieces, Lensky’s Aria from Tchaikovsky’s Eugene Onegin.
Only in the aria from Verdi’s Luisa Miller does he seem to over-pressurise his voice.
The studio acoustic gives him the vocal equivalent of a warm bath. But having heard him in La Traviata at Covent Garden last year, I know he is also impressive live and will surely go far.
Indeed, on this evidence he must be ranked alongside Michael Fabiano, also in his mid-30s, as a serious challenger to the established order of Jonas Kaufmann, Joseph Calleja and Juan Diego Flórez among the top contemporary tenors.