Mariss Jansons conducts his New Year’s Concert debut on January 1, 2006, an event for which he is preparing with much enthusiasm and exactitude. In one interview the Latvian conductor describes his appearance as “a dream come true”. Jansons was born in 1943 in Riga, and soon came to Leningrad, where he studied violin, piano and orchestral direction, and began his conducting career in 1973.The artistic collaboration between the Vienna Philharmonic and Mariss Jansons goes back to 1992, and the musical affinity between orchestra and conductor was palpable from the beginning. Since that time there have been 65 joint concerts, including three highly successful appearances in New York earlier this year. “For a true music lover, he is one of the great conductors”, explains Chairman Clemens Hellsberg.

Mariss Jansons’ relationship to the music of the Strauss family is firmly rooted in his past. His father, Arvid Jansons, was for decades (along with Jevgeni Mravinski) the main conductor of the Leningrad Philharmonic, and conducted every year on New Year’s Eve a Strauss program. Later, when Mariss studied conducting in Vienna under the legendary Hans Swarowsky, he had ample opportunity to familiarize himself closely with the works of the Strauss family. “He knows this material very well”, observes Hellsberg. Jansons himself says, “The most important thing is that this music goes through my head, my soul and my body”.

The meticulously assembled program for this year’s concert contains, in addition to both well-known and lesser-known compositions of the Strauss family, works by Joseph Lanner and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, whose 250th annivsary will be celebrated around the world in 2006. Six compositions, “Auf’s Korn! (Take Aim!)”, “Liebesbotschaft (Message of Love)” and “Künstler-Quadrille (Artist’s Quadrille)” by Johann Strauss, Jr., “Telephon” (Eduard Strauss), the Overture to “The Marriage of Figaro” (Mozart), and “Die Mozartisten” (Lanner), will be performed for the first time on the New Year’s Concert

There will be one more premiere on this day worthy of mention. For the first time, Latvia, the country of birth of Mariss Jansons, will be receiving the live television broadcast of the concert from Vienna.