Vienna New Year Concert
The New Year Concert of the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra, as its name suggest, takes place every year in the morning of January 1. Broadcasted around the world with over one billion audiences in 44 countries worldwide, the New Year Concert mainly highlights classical music.
The first New Year Concert was held in 1939, wherein Clemens Krauss conducted the event. For the first time and only once in the New Year Concert history, the event occurred on December 31 of that year, instead of the first day of 1940. Before 1945, there were no encores in all events. Clemens Krauss, the first conductor of the show, always included “Perpetuum mobile” as an encore or part of the concert. In 1945, the first ever encore, the Blue Danube Waltz, was performed. The other most popular encore, which was first performed in 1946 and again in recent years, is Johann Strauss Sr.’s Redetzky March. Although these two pieces were rarely used as encores, it became a permanent tradition at the New Year Concert starting 1958, until today.
Some exceptions in the closing tradition occurred; once in 1967 when Willi Boskovsky decided to use the Blue Danube in his program and another in 2005 when Lorin Maazel ended the program using the Blue Danube in memory of the victims of the 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake, while skipping the Radetzky March.
Conductors of the New Year Concert included Clemens Krauss, Josef Krips, Willi Boskovsky, Lorin Maazel (the first non-Austrian conductor of the show), Herbert von Karajan, Claudio Abbado, Carlos Kleiber, Zubin Mehta, Riccardo Muti, Nikolaus Harnoncourt, Seiji Ozawa, Mariss Jansons and the latest, Georges Pretre. Starting 2009, the conductor of the concert will be Daniel Barenboim.
The tradition of choosing a different conductor each year began in 1987 after Lorin Maazel appeared in seven concerts in a row. Members of the orchestra voted a rotation in conductors. This decision may have been possible because the concert has been broadcasted worldwide, or to make the show more marketable, or even to grant Austrian Herbert von Karajan the long denied honor as conductor.
The music of the New Year Concert always included pieces from the Strauss family (Eduard Strauss, Josef Strauss, Johan Strauss II and Johan Strauss I), with occasional pieces from other popular Austrian composers, including Karl Michael Ziehrer, Emil von Reznicek, Franz Schubert, Carl Otto Nicolai, Josef Lanner, Joseph Hellsmesberger Jr., Franz von Suppe and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. The concert usually includes a dozen pieces, but with a longer pause during half time. The compositions used include marches, mazurkas, polkas and waltzes. As of 2007, the entire New Year Concert, including its pauses, lasts about two and a half hours.
The New Year Concert has been celebrated at the “Großer Saal” or (Large hall of the Wiener Musikverein) since the first show in 1939. Every year, the city of Sanremo Italy donates the flowers decorated at the concert hall. The orchestra is joined by pairs of ballet dancers from the Vienna State Opera Ballet and dancers coming from the Schonbrunn Palace. The concert ends with three encores after the program – the first is a fast polka, the second is Blue Danube Waltz by Johann Strauss II and the last is the Radetzky March from Johann Strauss Sr.
Although the New Year Concert became widely popular throughout Europe, it has become a global event. The demand for tickets for the concert is so high that people start to pre-register a year in advance just to participate in the concert of the following year. Many Austrian families have passed down yearly seat reservations from generation to generation. As of 2006, the New Year Concert is shown in Spain, Japan and Australia as well as African and Latin America countries.
