Riccardo Muti receives Double Platinum Award for 2018 New Year’s Concert

Vienna, August 21st, 2018

The New Year’s Concert from Vienna’s Musikverein is still one of the world’s best-selling classical albums. This unique concert has again been awarded with top honours in Austria.                               

During the current Salzburg Festival, Maestro Riccardo Muti and the Vienna Philharmonic were presented with the Double Platinum Award for the New Year’s Concert 2018.

The ratings of the live broadcast were, at their highest point, over 50%.

The New Year‘s Concert is a beautiful task for a conductor. Everyone thinks that the music of the Strauss family is easy – just because it is light and brilliant. But what sounds light and brilliant is often very, very hard. To do these unique works justice – and with the whole world watching – is challenging. But facing such a challenge with the Vienna Philharmonic, my friends and partners of so many years, made the 2018 concert an enormously satisfying and joyful experience for me.

Riccardo Muti

Riccardo Muti gave – in what is already his fifth New Year’s concert  – a noble elegance to the music that unites the joyful Italianità  with the lightness and melodic richness of the Viennese Strauss music. The concert was a special experience for us. We are very pleased that the audience felt the same and that the recording has now been awarded Double Platinum.

Michael Bladerer, Managing Director and double bass player of the Vienna Philharmonic

In the image: Dr. Bogdan Roscic (President, Sony Classics), Riccardo Muti, Michael Bladerer (Managing Director, Wiener Philharmoniker), Oliver Wazola (Head of Classics & Jazz, Sony Music Austria)