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The good news: There is a Vienna New Year's Concert in 2021 - despite the third lockdown in Austria.

But without an audience, in the empty Golden Hall of the Musikverein.

And with individually mixed instant applause from the loudspeaker.

At least for the sixth time Riccardo Muti, one of the most important conductors, at the podium of the Vienna Philharmonic.

WORLD:

What does the New Year's Concert mean to you?

Riccardo Muti: On the

one hand, it is a tribute to the orchestra that means most to me alongside the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, of which I am head.

The Vienna Philharmonic is a very special musical home for me.

I will celebrate my 80th birthday in 2021, and it will be 50 years since I conducted this orchestra for the first time.

And now for the sixth time I have been invited by them to the New Year's concert.

Only Clemens Krauss, Willi Boskovsky and Lorin Maazel as the head of the Vienna State Opera have conducted it more often.

I also think it's a wonderful gesture to start the new year with this wonderful Viennese music.

It is a traditional, friendly, festive greeting out into the world.

And we can especially use that right now.

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WORLD:

Do you even like waltzes?

Muti:

I'm from Naples, I've always found that to be much closer to Austrian than, say, Milan.

And not just because a Habsburg woman, Maria Theresa's daughter Maria Karolina, once sat on the throne.

She even did a lot for the music there, even though she had a particularly stupid Bourbon husband in Ferdinand I.

Of course, when the Philharmonic invited me to my first New Year's concert in 1993, I asked whether they really thought I could waltz.

And we both noticed that we worked our way through Franz Schubert, his love for life and melancholy, very naturally to Johann Strauss.

A cosmos of Viennese way of life closes here, so to speak.

WORLD:

What distinguishes a Muti waltz?

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Muti: In

spite of all the cheerfulness, I always find a certain sadness in this music, it has two faces.

That makes them much more valuable.

But you have to listen to it in the notes.

I also learn that as I experience waltz.

And this time, which should really be my last on this date, will probably occupy us even more with this other, thoughtful, sometimes a little overlooked side of Viennese music.

As a Christmas greeting I played a Schubert waltz on the piano at home in Ravenna, a very nice one that he wrote for the wedding of his friend and lyricist Leopold Kupelwieser.

Music is always a service of love.

Riccardo Muti's fifth New Year's concert

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WORLD:

For the first time, it will be a New Year's concert without an audience.

Have you thought about a rejection?

Muti:

Of course not!

Right now I find the obligation particularly great to send a little joy and serenity with an orchestra playing live, even if this time more composed than to send a signal outside.

After all, that's one of my jobs as a musician and conductor.

Even if this is of course a sad thing this time.

I hope we can still find solutions to the applause and clapping at the Radetzky March.

Fortunately, the ballet interludes were recorded in the summer.

And secretly, of course, I wish that maybe at least a few spectators could get inside ...

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WORLD:

Have you thought about program changes?

Muti:

Not a second.

Should we look for a happy plague waltz now?

The program is always coordinated with the conductor by Strauss experts.

There should always be novelties such as this time the waltz “Bad'ner Mad'ln” by Karl Komzák or music by Karl Millöcker and Carl Zeller.

And I am delighted that we are honoring Franz von Suppè twice, whose 200th birthday was of course in 2019.

Maybe they waited especially for my appearance, because Suppè was born in Split, and that had just passed from the Republic of Venice to the Habsburgs.

And the Margherita polka by Josef Strauss is of course a homage to the Italian queen, after whom the Neapolitan pizza variety is named.

As you can see, the program seems well composed.

That doesn't upset a pandemic either.

WORLD:

How will you continue in 2021?

Muti:

Very improvised and unusual.

I don't know when I'll be performing again with my Chicago Symphony Orchestra, we're hoping for spring.

After all, they all get 75 percent of their salary, a rarity in America.

Actually I wanted to conduct Beethoven's “Missa Solemnis” there for the first time in autumn, now it will be summer in Salzburg with the Viennese.

I have to make an effort.

I try to get as many appointments as possible with my Orchestra Giovanile Luigi Cherubini, after all, the young people need the performances and fees.

In mid-December we played and streamed “The Seven Last Words of Our Savior on the Cross” in the court theater of the palace of Caserta Haydn, loud adagios, that went deep.

And in February, if possible, I will bring my daughter Chiara's production of “Così fan tutte” to Turin, all new projects.

WORLD:

You belong to the risk group yourself.

You don't seem to mind.

Muti:

I've lived my life, now I want to pass on.

A virus can't worry me there.

I take care, but don't let myself be stopped.

Spreading culture and beauty, that is my mission, which is also a spiritual one.

Music makes humanity better, at least a little.

I won't fall silent now of all times!

Even if I will never get used to not being confronted with an audience at the moment.

Better than nothing.

The most important thing is that the world can still experience something like the Vienna New Year's Concert.