It was surely only a matter of time before Christian Thielemann was invited to conduct the Vienna Philharmonic’s New Year’s Day concert, and enthusiasts of Thielemann’s work will be impressed by the result – though there’s plenty here to please anyone who loves this music.

Thielemann’s programme is filled with genuinely worthwhile rarities, in addition to more familiar fare – including two exquisitely scored lollipops by the VPO’s one-time conductor Joseph Hellmesberger. The outer sections of his Elfenreigen sound as if a Mendelssohn scherzo has been dipped in icing sugar; Thielemann handles it delicately, and gives a charming lilt to Josef Strauss’s Die Tänzerin. Eduard’s Opern-Soirée is delicious. But faster polkas such as Im Sturmschritt never quite fizz, and final cadences (Express is a case in point) can sound slapdash – though, in fairness, the Ritter Pásmán csárdás has the verve and headlong momentum of a cavalry charge. It’s terrific.

Elsewhere, it’s probably wisest not to get too hung up on any preconceived notions of Viennese style. Unsurprisingly, the Wagnerite Thielemann leans towards the dramatic in larger-scale waltzes: powerfully atmospheric in the slow introductions to Josef’s Transactionen and Johann II’s Nordseebilder, and thrillingly grandiose (savour that Viennese horn sound) in the ‘Eva-Walzer’. The dance sequences themselves are on the languid side – not to say earnest. Transitions are occasionally awkward and there isn’t really a moment in the concert where a solo player sounds like they’re being allowed off the leash. In the Egyptian March, the VPO players should consider taking singing lessons from the Budapest Festival Orchestra.

Thielemann often attracts comparisons with Karajan but against Karajan’s transcendent 1987 Sphärenklänge the younger conductor’s reading is earthbound, if still beautiful – an impression reinforced by an icily majestic Blue Danube and a Radetzky March that definitely feels more Hohenzollern than Habsburg. Perhaps, in these po-faced times, we get the New Year’s Day concert we deserve, and there are those, still unconvinced of Strauss’s genius, who might respond to such imposing performances. There’ll never be only one way to play this repertoire and for 2020 there’s the promise of Andris Nelsons: a conductor without a trace of the bandmaster about him.