Riccardo Muti’s appearance at 2025’s New Year’s Day concert with the Vienna Philharmonic was his seventh, meaning that he has now conducted on this occasion more frequently than any living conductor. His last appearance was before an empty Musikverein in the Covid year of 2021, and given his history of polishing the less familiar jewels of the Viennese repertoire (Czibulka, Lanner and Komzák have all featured in Muti programmes, with Suppé as something of a favourite), you might have expected him to push the boat out on this altogether happier occasion.

And in fairness, no one could call 2025’s offering hackneyed, though it contains only two works that have not previously been played in a New Year’s Day concert. Hellmesberger Jr’s Fidele Brüder swings along solidly, and it’s followed by the Ferdinandus-Walzer by Constanze Geiger – a child prodigy much admired by the Strauss family, who later married into royalty and who composed this waltz at the age of 12. Wolfgang Dörner has orchestrated the surviving piano score, doing some playful things with the woodwinds and bringing out Geiger’s real, if slightly staid, charm. Geiger apparently also composed a Radetzky-Marsch, and if Muti had been feeling mischievous it might have been entertaining to have heard that, too.

But with the best will in the world, it didn’t seem as if Muti was particularly in the mood for fun this year – at least not of the champagne-fuelled variety that one tends to associate with New Year. I rarely see the live TV broadcast under ideal reviewing conditions, but this recording confirms my visual impression on the day: namely, that no one watching was likely to confuse Muti with a ray of sunshine. The string tone, more troublingly, lacks the body and lustre one expects from the VPO, though their articulation is as supple and expressive as ever. Possibly it’s a matter of recorded balance.

Still, there’s more than one way to handle this repertoire. While Muti’s approach to some of the up-tempo numbers (such as Strauss senior’s opening Freiheits-Marsch and Eduard Strauss’s zippy Luftig und duftig polka) lacks the last ounce of rhythmic crispness, there’s a pleasing lilt and lift to the Annen-Polka and a dapper panache about Muti’s approach to Die Bajadere, the first encore.

The real beauties, though, are to be found in the larger works, where Muti’s pensive approach allows the darker side of the music to break surface: an earthy, brooding Zigeunerbaron Overture, straight from the soil of the puszta, and characterful, plangent clarinet- and horn-playing in Dorfschwalben aus Österreich (my cat seemed wholly persuaded by the birdcalls). Muti, that lifelong Verdian, builds the introduction to Wein, Weib und Gesang like an operatic prelude and adopts daringly slow tempos in Josef’s magnificent Transactionen waltz – in Muti’s reading, a tone poem of lengthening shadows, rather than anything to which one might plausibly dance.

And why not? Melancholy has always been part of the Viennese melange. One joy of hearing dance music played in concert is the opportunity to savour depths that are routinely overlooked – even if the aching nostalgia at the opening of Muti’s Blue Danube leaves him with nowhere much to go when Strauss returns to the same material in the coda. This felt like a New Year’s concert for those who regard January 1 as a time for regretful farewells, rather than fresh starts. But it’s part of the miracle of this music that it can bear both interpretations, and Muti understands that. Not for everyday listening, perhaps, but one to store up and savour when the mood is right.