J Strauss – The Blue Danube Every New Year collection must include this, the most famous waltz ever written, always the penultimate piece played in the popular New Year’s Day concert from Vienna’s Musikverein. An der schönen, blauen Donau (to give it its proper title), one of the best pieces of classical music to celebrate New Year, was originally a choral work written for the Vienna Men’s Singing Society in 1867. Today, in its purely orchestral guise, it is Austria’s second national anthem.
Hummel – Trumpet Concerto in E-Flat Major Hummel, a pupil of Mozart and Albrechtsberger, also studied for a time with Haydn. In 1803 he wrote this Trumpet Concerto for the same virtuoso, Anton Weidlnger, for whom Haydn had earlier written his trumpet concerto. Hummel took over from Haydn as Kapellmesiter to the Einstadt court on New Year’s Day 1804, the day that Weidlinger gave the first performance of this brilliant work.
Fletcher – Ring Out Wild Bells Here is a setting of Ring Out, Wild Bells, from In Memoriam by Alfred Lord Tennyson. It is by Percy Fletcher (1879-1932), a British composer best known for his brass band and military music. And it is one of the most effective, especially in this spine-tingling performance by the Black Dyke Mills Band, the Huddersfield Choral Society conducted by Roy Newsome.
Brahms – Violin Concerto in D Major Brahms composed just one concerto for the violin and, in so doing, produced one of the great masterpieces for the instrument, “a song for violin on a symphonic scale,” as one writer put it. Every famous violinist has the work in their repertoire. The first to play it was Brahms’s friend and adviser Joseph Joachim, who gave the first performance on New Year’s Day 1879.
Waldteufel – The Skater’s Waltz Émile Waldteufel (1837-1915) – a French composer, despite his German-sounding name – spent much of his life in Paris, winning worldwide fame for his dance music. No doubt inspired by the fact that the Seine regularly froze over in the late 1870s and early 1880s, Les Patineurs (The Skaters Waltz) is his most widely-known work, though it did not become an international success until the 1920s.
