New Year’s Eve 2007,  I settled in for the annual Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra Concert. It was disappointing. Or perhaps I am just tired of this tradition. No effort is made to vary it from year to year, at least as it is produced for North American audiences. Walter Cronkite is the host and at 91 he is visibly older and frailer. As usual, it is not enough to see the concert; we have to have ballet dancers leaping about in the halls of one baroque palace or another, or the Lippezaner stallions from the Spanish Riding School in Vienna stepping to the music of a Strauss polka. The conductor on this occasion was another aging personage, Georges Prêtre (83). He was an odd choice for such an occasion, but he did a fine job with lots of personal touches of phrasing. But what the tradition needs is some fresh blood and ideas. How about Simon Rattle next time and let him shake up the format.

I do love NPR but there are times when I have to agree with James Wolcott. He confessed he could not listen to NPR in the morning:

I’m just not a good enough person to be the receptacle for all that homogenized reasonableness lightly laced with whimsy and vitamin-enriched with valuable life lessons. (11/20/07)

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