The Vienna New Year's Concert

The Vienna New Year's Concert (Neujahrskonzert der Wiener Philharmoniker) is an annual concert of classical music performed by the Vienna Philharmonic on the morning of New Year's Day in Vienna, Austria. The concert occurs at the Musikverein at 11:15. The orchestra performs the same concert programme on 30 December, 31 December, and 1 January but only the last concert is regularly broadcast on radio and television.

Music and setting

The concert programmes always include pieces from the Strauss family—Johann Strauss I, Johann Strauss II, Josef Strauss and Eduard Strauss. On occasion, music principally of other Austrian composers, including Joseph Hellmesberger Jr., Joseph Lanner, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Otto Nicolai (the Vienna Philharmonic's founder), Emil von Reznicek, Franz Schubert, Franz von Suppé, and Karl Michael Ziehrer has featured in the programmes. In 2009, music by Joseph Haydn was played for the first time, where the 4th movement of his "Farewell" Symphony marked the 200th anniversary of his death. Other European composers such as Hans Christian Lumbye, Jacques Offenbach, Emile Waldteufel, Richard Strauss, Verdi, and Tchaikovsky have been featured in recent programmes.

The announced programme contains approximately 14-20 compositions, and also three encores. The announced programme includes waltzes, polkas, mazurkas, and marches. Of the encores, the unannounced first encore is often a fast polka. The second is Johann Strauss II's waltz The Blue Danube, whose introduction is interrupted by applause of recognition and a New Year's greeting from the conductor and orchestra to the audience. The final encore is Johann Strauss I's Radetzky March, during which the audience claps along under the conductor's direction. In this last piece, the tradition also calls for the conductor to start the orchestra as soon he steps onto the stage, before reaching the podium. The complete duration of the event is around two and a half hours.

The concerts have been held in the "Goldener Saal" (Golden Hall) of the Musikverein since 1939.

The television broadcast is augmented by ballet performances in selected pieces during the second part of the programme. The dancers come from the Vienna State Ballet and dance at different famous places in Austria, e. g. Schönbrunn Palace, Schloss Esterházy, the Vienna State Opera or the Wiener Musikverein itself. In 2013, the costumes were designed by Vivienne Westwood.[1] From 1980 until 2013, the flowers that decorated the hall were a gift from the city of Sanremo, Liguria, Italy. In 2014, the orchestra itself provided the flowers. Since 2014, the flowers have been arranged by the Wiener Stadtgärten. In 2017, the orchestra performed for the first time in new attire designed by Vivienne Westwood and Andreas Kronthaler.

History

There had been a tradition of concerts on New Year's Day in Vienna since 1838, but not with music of the Strauss family. From 1928 to 1933 there were six New Year's concerts in the Musikverein, conducted by Johann Strauss III. These concerts were broadcast by the RAVAG. In 1939, Clemens Krauss, with the support of Vienna Gauleiter Baldur von Schirach, devised a New Year's concert which the orchestra dedicated to Kriegswinterhilfswerk ('Winter War Relief'), to improve morale at the front lines. After World War II, this concert survived, as the Nazi origins were largely forgotten, until more recently.

The concert was first performed in 1939, and conducted by Clemens Krauss. For the first and only time, the concert was not given on New Year's Day, but instead on 31 December of that year. It was called then a special, or 'extraordinary' concert (Außerordentliches Konzert). Johann Strauss II was the only composer performed, in a modest program:

• "Morgenblätter", Op. 279, waltz
• "Annen-Polka", Op. 117, dedicated to Maria Anna of Savoy
• Csárdás from the opera Ritter Pázmán
• "Kaiser-Walzer", Op. 437
• "Leichtes Blut", Polka schnell, Op. 319
• "Ägyptischer Marsch", Op. 335
• "G'schichten aus dem Wienerwald", Walzer, Op. 325
• "Pizzicato-Polka"
• "Perpetuum mobile", ein musikalischer Scherz, Op. 257
• Ouverture to the operetta Die Fledermaus

There were no encores in 1939, and sources indicate that encores were not instituted until 1945. Clemens Krauss almost always included "Perpetuum mobile" either on the concert or as an encore. The waltz The Blue Danube was not performed until 1945, and then as an encore. The Radetzky March was first performed in 1946, as an encore. Until 1958, these last two pieces were often but not always given as encores. Since that year, their position as twin encores has become inviolable tradition, with two exceptions:

• In 1967, Willi Boskovsky made the Blue Danube part of his concert program.
• In 2005, Lorin Maazel and the orchestra concluded the program with the Blue Danube, omitting the Radetzky March as a mark of respect to the victims of the 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake and tsunami.

One unannounced encore is always placed before the Blue Danube, and after the final announced work on the printed concert programme.

Boskovsky, concertmaster of the orchestra from 1939 until 1970, directed the Vienna New Year's concerts from 1955 to 1979. In 1980, Lorin Maazel became the first non-Austrian conductor of the concert. The orchestra subsequently changed practice, to choose a different conductor every year. The first such choice was Herbert von Karajan, for the 1987 concert. Karajan's concert also featured the only invited guest artist in the history of the concert, Kathleen Battle.

• Clemens Krauss: 1939, 1941–1945, 1948–1954
• Josef Krips: 1946–1947
• Willi Boskovsky: 1955–1979
• Lorin Maazel: 1980–1986, 1994, 1996, 1999, 2005
• Herbert von Karajan: 1987
• Claudio Abbado: 1988, 1991
• Carlos Kleiber: 1989, 1992
• Zubin Mehta: 1990, 1995, 1998, 2007, 2015
• Riccardo Muti: 1993, 1997, 2000, 2004, 2018, 2021
• Nikolaus Harnoncourt: 2001, 2003
• Seiji Ozawa: 2002
• Mariss Jansons: 2006, 2012, 2016
• Georges Prêtre: 2008, 2010
• Daniel Barenboim: 2009, 2014
• Franz Welser-Möst: 2011, 2013
• Gustavo Dudamel: 2017
• Christian Thielemann: 2019
• Andris Nelsons: 2020

Audience

The concert is popular throughout Europe, and more recently around the world. The demand for tickets is so high that people have to pre-register one year in advance in order to participate in the drawing of tickets for the following year. Some seats are pre-registered by certain Austrian families and are passed down from generation to generation.

The event is televised by the Austrian national broadcasting service ORF – from 1989 to 1993, 1997 to 2009, and again in 2011 under the direction of Brian Large – and relayed via the European Broadcasting Union's Eurovision network to most major broadcasting organizations in Europe. On 1 January 2013, for example, the concert was shown on Één and La Une in Belgium, ZDF in Germany, France 2 in France, BBC Two in the United Kingdom, Rai 2 in Italy (on some hours delay), RSI La 1 in Switzerland, La 1 in Spain, ČT2 in the Czech Republic, RTP1 in Portugal, and TVP2 in Poland, among many other channels. The concert was again televised by ORF on 1 January 2015 and 1 January 2016. Estimated audience numbers are ~50 million, in 73 countries in 2012, 93 countries in 2017 and 95 countries in 2018.

Outside Europe, the concert is also shown on PBS in the United States (beginning in 1985, as part of the performing arts anthology Great Performances, in abridged form), CCTV in China since 1987 (being telecast live since 1989, except in 1990) while also being broadcast live by CNR in China since 2013, NHK in Japan since 1973, MetroTV in Indonesia, KBS in South Korea, and SBS in Australia (until 2018, on delay). Since 2006, the concert has also been broadcast to viewers in several African countries (Botswana, Lesotho, Malawi, Mozambique, Namibia, Swaziland, Zambia and Zimbabwe). In Latin America the concert is shown in Chile by La Red, and in Guatemala, Ecuador and Bolivia. Indonesia's MetroTV broadcasts the concert although it is delayed by four to five days. The concert was broadcast for the first time in Mongolia, Mozambique, Sri Lanka and Trinidad in 2010.

Commercial recordings

Decca Records made the first of the live commercial recordings, with the 1 January 1979 digital recording (their first digital LP releases) of the 25th time (and 24 years = 1979-1955) of the New Year's Concert with Willi Boskovsky conducting the Vienna Philharmonic.

Other New Year's concerts in Vienna

The Vienna Hofburg Orchestra's traditional New Year's Eve Concert takes place on 31 December in the halls of the Hofburg Palace. The program features the most famous waltz and operetta melodies by Johann Strauss, Emmerich Kálmán, Franz Lehár and opera arias by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.