New Year's Concert 2021

Editors' Notes After a challenging 2020, this concert—heralding the start of a fresh year—came as an especially welcome treat. Since 1939, Vienna’s New Year’s Concert has brought music by the Strauss family and its contemporaries to a packed Musikverein and, more recently, to millions around the world. Italian conductor Riccardo Muti, presiding over the annual celebration for the sixth time, leads the Vienna Philharmonic in a sparkling programme full of waltzes, marches and polkas. Despite the absence of an audience due to the global coronavirus crisis, there’s a palpable joy that spills over in every note—from von Suppé’s “Fatinitza-Marsch” to Josef Strauss’ “Margherita-Polka” and a host of music by Johann Strauss II, including the celebrated “Blue Danube” (“An der schönen, blauen Donau”) waltz.