From Vienna: The New Year's Celebration 2015 Great Performances : Season 42 Episode 4

Stage and screen legend Julie Andrews returns for the sixth time to host the festive annual New Year’s celebration with the Vienna Philharmonic, under the direction of Zubin Mehta, from Vienna’s Musikverein. From Vienna: The New Year’s Celebration 2015, featuring the infectious melodies of the Strauss Family and their contemporaries, aired on Great Performances, Thursday, January 1 at 2:30 p.m. ET on PBS with an encore performance that evening at 8 p.m. From Vienna: The New Year's Celebration 2015 with Zubin MehtaThis is the 77-year-old maestro’s fifth appearance on the podium for the New Year’s Concert. Following Willi Boskovsky, Clemens Krauss and Lorin Maazel, Mehta joins the list of these great maestros who have conducted the concert most often. The Vienna State Ballet heads back to school and dances to both the “Students Polka” and the “Wine, Women and Song Waltz” in the palatial main building of Vienna’s 650-year-old University on the city’s grand Ringstrasse. The venerable concert is the largest worldwide event in classical music reaching millions of people annually through radio and television in over 80 countries. The Vienna Philharmonic’s traditional New Year’s program has showcased Viennese musical culture at the highest level, and since the first television broadcast in 1959, sent the world a New Year’s greeting in the spirit of hope, friendship and peace. (The telecast marks the 31st broadcast of the event on PBS.)