Whether or not you celebrate New Year's Eve, and whether or not you have recovered, turn on your local public radio station and listen to the Vienna Philharmonic's New Year's Day Concert live from, well Vienna!

Last year, you may recall, Nicholas Clifford gave a head's up about it. The concert ends with the Radeztky March. That is also the title of Joseph Roth's melancholy novel of pre-WWI Austria (which was much larger than it is now). A volume of the Letters of Joseph Roth was in my Christmas stocking reminding me of the gap between Roth's story and the merry waltzes and high-stepping marches of Austria in the days of the Hapsburg Empire's dying grandeur.

This is the link to the local NYC announcement of the concert: 11 AM here; 8 AM in Arizona.

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Margaret O’Brien Steinfels is a former editor of Commonweal. 

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