And, of course, the Danube never was blue, not even then.”At that moment, the mobile phone that has lain unobtrusively alongside the venerable Bosendorfer piano in the Strauss music room springs into full digital life. The Waltz King seizes it with alacrity, gabbles into it for a moment or two in his still incomprehensible Viennese dialect, and is already calling for his camel-haired ankle-length coat “Forgive me, I must dash I am talking to America via satellite. Adele will show you out.” Outside, I hear the jingle of the harness as the waiting fiacre, blinds down, bears off along the snow-lined Vienna streets the man the Austrians seem to have crowned their new Emperor of Music.The Vienna Philharmonic’s New Year’s Day Concert, presented by Brian Kay, is broadcast live on BBC Radio 3 today at 10.15am (with Part 2 also on BBC2 from 11.15am). During the interval, David King plays Bruckner in Piers Burton-Page’s `The Linz Version’. JANUARY

Visual Arts: “Braque: the late works”. Still lives with more scraps of newsprint than even Picasso could muster Royal Academy (23).
Theatre: The Homecoming.

Roger Michell revives Pinter’s classic family drama, with Lindsay Duncan National Theatre (23).Opera: Palestrina. Long-awaited British stage premiere of Hans Pfitzner’s 1917 epic about the Renaissance composer and the redeeming power of music Thomas Moser stars, Nikolaus Lehnhoff directs. Royal Opera House (28).FEBRUARYComedy: Jack Dee and Sandra Bernhard head up Leicester’s comedy fest – the biggest and best in the UK. Various venues (7-16)Classical: Pierre Boulez opens R3’s pre-Millennial “Sounding the Century” project, conducting Stravinsky’s Rite with the BBC SO RFH, SBC, London (16).Theatre: Ivanov. 1997 is Ralph Fiennes’s year, starting with this rare piece of Chekhov, directed by Jonathan Kent in a reprise of the partnership that gave us the Hackney Hamlet. Almeida, London (18).MARCHClassical: Mstislav Rostropovich marks his 70th birthday with five concerts with the LSO.

Barbican Hall, London (8, 11, 13, 16, 25).Film: Ondaatje’s English Patient would seem unfilmable, were it not for Ralph Fiennes (again) and Kristin Scott-Thomas.(14).Theatre: King Lear Ian Holm braves the storm, Sir Richard Eyre directs National Theatre (27).Book: Blake Morrison’s As If. More family matters from the author of the tender memoir, When Did You Last See Your Father?.APRILOpera: The Damnation of Faust. People will persist in trying to stage Berlioz’s unstageable Faustian fantasy This time it’s the turn of American maverick, David Alden. London Coliseum (7).Visual Arts: “The Object in British Art of the Eighties and Nineties” Shorthand for “inaccessible” Works by Hirst, Whiteread, Kapoor Hayward Gallery, London.Dance: Ricochet Dance Unusually, run by dancers Including work from award-winning Javier De Frutos QEH, London.MAYOpera: Tannhauser. Paul Daniel bids farewell to Opera North (en route to ENO) with Wagner’s magical mystery tour around the Mons Veneris Leeds Grand (3).Musical: The Fix. New musical by John Dempsey, echoing Assassins in its shooting down of US politics Donmar Warehouse, London.Opera: Verdi Festival Royal Opera House, London.Pop: The Fugees. The Score was an original take on rap: you could listen to it Fifties R&B mixed with De La Soul.